Where I’ve been?
Well honestly, there is a lot I don’t want to talk about.
Mostly because I’m a private person and I really don’t like to have details of
my life known in the public.
Suffice to say, I got sick, I got really sick, and it
could have killed me. It’s got worse before it got better, and then it got
worse again. But, I’m fighting back, taking my meds and seeing the doctor once
a fortnight now.
Regardless, onto what you are all here for: Psycholi-jay.
What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more.)
Arnold Rimmer once cynically quipped “Love is a device
invented by bank managers to make us overdrawn.” And any attempts to describe
it more realistically in a pithy one-liner would be difficult.
Being in love dramatically changes your neurochemistry, promoting a
the release of a lot of the hormones and neurochemicals we associate with happiness, depression
and obsession. For those of you who have dabbled with drugs I am informed it
feels a lot like taking heroin. Evolutionarily speaking it’s assumed to be present
to ensure mate-loyalty, and secure the most suitable genetic donors for your progeny,
socially speaking it’s viewed as a sort of “Rite of passage” that everyone must
go through in order to better understand others and themselves (hopefully).
But being “in love” generally only lasts about six
months, the intensity of such emotions can’t be sustained much longer than
that. Sadly many people flitter between these short-term relationships, never
really understanding why they can’t sustain that “Spark” they had when they
first met their paramour. Hopefully though, one of the lasting side effects of
love is a feeling of security and contentment, often associated with being “at
home”, much as Dory the fish from finding Nemo says “I look at you, and I’m home,”
could be said to be expressing this. Love (after all) does not always have to
be the sexual or the romantic.So eventually people settle and find that their burning passion has settled into the glowing comforting embers of a love sustained.
Love is also strongly linked to hate, as Granny Weatherwax
once said “Hate is love with its back turned.” Hatred is an obsession, and a
powerful one that often has its roots in a love betrayed, denied, or scorned,
and can often make you just as irrational as love can. I’m idly thinking of all
the militant anti-gay politicians who were later to be revealed to be massive
closeted sausage connoisseurs as I write this. Whenever you find a person in
hatred, you can often follow the roots back and find a flicker of love,
probably brutalised and bruised tangled in that mess of hatred, but I guess
that is what psychotherapists are paid a lot of money for.
The last thing about love is, it’s not something we
control. Often you see people in abusive relationships but they can’t leave,
simply because they feel that love there and it’s so compelling that if they
let it go, it will be more pain then to stay. It’s easy to sneer at such people
and hand-wave their situation away as them “secretly loving the abuse” or other
such rot, but in reality, just as you can’t change an irrational fear, you can’t
change an irrational love. You can only
hope that you’re strong enough to overcome it, just as other emotions that
dominate your life will also sometimes have to be overcome.
Love can make a wonderful companion, but a cruel master.
