I don't know if you suffer from this ailment, but it's like intuition, but always about things that are bad for you, but potentially good for others. Mine seems to be on overdrive for detecting when other people are better suited for one another, even if I happen to like one of the parties involved. In fact, it's been kind of a theme in my life since I was thirteen and my best friend ended up dating a boy I liked, and I sacrificially gave her the a-okay because I just wanted someone to be happy with him, even if it wasn't me.
Not trying to get undue credit for that, or anything...
So, have you ever dated someone, but they know someone else, and you can kind of already tell they'll eventually go out, sometime after you're out of the picture? And you look at their stupid pictures on the internet, and see them in public and act all cordial, and they kind of act that way back, but both of you know what's really going on? The entire relationship seems thereon to be functioning on borrowed time; you're even extending the potential mythologization of that new person by remaining with them because after you, and your mediocrity, they other person will seem oh so much better. And then you think about it, and obsess, and lash out for no reason, and they think you're a crazy person, and are all the more happier for you to go and the new person to stay.
and what I'm trying to say is, it hurts, right? Like all relationships. They just hurt, and after a while, no matter how optimistic the mind wants to be, no matter how much in principle you might believe love matters and it's worth it, you can't touch the stove. You just can't. It just hurts, it burns, it aches, that lasts... you just want to curl up in a ball and be left alone, because that's how you were brought into this place, and that's how you'll leave it too.
There's a wedding section at Russel's books. Glossy, pastel tones paint pretty pictures of floral arrangments and hands clasping, rings shining, smiles widening as couples everywhere grace my mind with images of happily ever after, the code words in my mind for 'never-gonna-happen' and 'guarenteed letdown' and 'who needs eternal love anyway'. The book covers emphasize to women that this will be, is, and will always be remembered as the happiest day of your life, and for men, life only starts /after/ you get married.
Geting married. I've thought about it before, even joked to boyfriends past about the arrangments we could potentially have (by the way, this is a terrible relationship move always), like who'd cook and clean and I would leave them post-it notes and do their laundry or something. It's like as a woman I'm trying to come up with a list of functions and services I could provide because I can't conceptualize a man liking who I am enough to just want me around all the time because usually, they never do.
And we've heard the arguments for and against. "It's an expensive, outdated tradition", and you can just be as happy without a lifelong partner as you could be with one. It's just a piece of paper, not necessarily a refelction of a situation, yadda. But as we age, societial expectation sets in, and whether or not we see the fallacy in it being part of our culture or not, it's still part of our culture, we're still thought in context of where we live and what society we were brought up in. People get married, all across the world, pair up, throw a party, before the eyes of God, strangers, ex-threesome partners, and agree, at least for the most part, to be together forever, and honour each other, and try to let the transient feelings they have for one another outlast their lifespans.
At least, generally.
Love, though. I've always thought as it potentially existing both within and outside of the construct of mariage. You don't need to get married to be in love, and you don't have to be in love to get married.
I've been thinking a lot about experimental psychology. Jung and all that nonsense. I also am reading a weird book about heroin addicts. I like music, found a few new bands... kind of feel totally obsolete about sharing my interests lately. I think Zac might have been right. I might be restricting my intellectual pursuits in spending too much time with just one single social group. But what the fuck does that even mean, right. Intellectualism. Like it ever made me that happy, anyway. People make me happy. No... people make me crazy.
Fuck it.
Sometimes when I try to anaylze my life here, I realize why I want to leave it. Sometimes the world is just too much. I want to shut off the lights in my 'nest' and listen to music and cry because it's beautiful and I don't want anyone around at all to tell me that it's cool that I do that. I don't really think anything I do is better or worse than anything anyone else does;
and in that, love remains not only transient, but kind of illogical.
