Love

Love is an unusual thing. I assume that it is for everyone, but I don't really care about them. I'm only interested in my own experience, at least, for the moment. It is a frustrating state of mind to be in for me - it's the one thing that I desire the most, yet it is the one thing that I despise and avoid the most, as well. What does that mean exactly?

Well, as far as I can explain, it goes something like this. I don't have many interests. I don't really get along with people in general, or I don't want to have to if I can avoid it.They talk about having Christ-like love, a general and universal love for all of your fellow man. I'm not a hateful man, by any means, but I certainly do not possess this sort of love. I honestly do not believe that I can really even achieve it in any fashion. The reason is that I don't have the energy to care. I hardly have the energy (be it mental or physical, but mostly mental) to take care of myself and my own problems. There's little to nothing that anyone can really do to help me out. I assume other people are in the same boat, and leave it at that. Besides, I've tried in the past to be a friendly and helpful person. I expended a lot of my personal energy on it in several cases (that's where all my motivation went, I believe) and rarely got any sort of result that made me feel good about it to any degree. People don't want your help unless its what they think it should be - which is rarely the case. Additionally, I'm not really interested in being the kind of helper that gets thrown under the bus so someone can 'have a seed planted' and experience the necessary changes later. There is no value in uncertainty for me.

As for love in term of interests, I don't have a lot of that, either. Few things truly excite me anymore. Those things that do are things that I will never be able to achieve or that I do not have the capacity to achieve just yet - that require a lot of mundane grinding to work towards. (Yeah, I know that's the story of everybody's life, but the point still stands.) As for everything else, I just don't give a crap. If it doesn't interest me, I either just couldn't care less or I have to put a lot of effort into making it look like I'm at least mildly interested. I don't have a lot of hobbies because I just can't muster the drive to check out new things on my own. I probably won't enjoy it anyway, and then I'll have spent money and time on something pointless. It's an awful way to view the world, but it's what I'm stuck with.

I don't have a lot, if any, of those types of love. For the most part, I don't really care too much; it doesn't bother me. But the third type... That is where the trouble starts. This is the type that I simultaneously desire with my whole being and loathe immensely. Emotional love, the love for individuals, the state of being in love. Fatol'khadak I hate it.

As I've mentioned before, I met this girl. That pretty much sums up the story. I met her and almost immediately liked her once she mentioned in passing conversation that she enjoyed those corny little math posters that you may find in high school math rooms. I think they're great. I fell in love with her the moment she first hugged me, the moment I got up the nerve to stick around with her after I was done with my chemistry lab one day last spring. I didn't fully realize just how much, especially since she had mentioned that she was dating someone at the time. Nevertheless, as we hung out more, which was a lot that semester, I became so totally enthralled by this girl that, well, when she broke up with that first boyfriend and started to date another guy that she had met around the same time as she had met me, I was devastated. 

Our relationship survived and I got over that hurt, particularly because she became very busy over the summer and into the current semester, so I rarely got to see her. This semester, however, things changed. Her relationship broke apart and all the repressed feelings I had flooded back to the forefront of my mind. After discussing the situation with a few people who I trusted, I decided to talk to her about them. I hoped that she would agree to go out with me, when she was ready. I wasn't expecting anything right away, of course, but I didn't want the opportunity to pass me by again like it had the previous time. 

So I prepared. I wrote down all the things that were on my mind, sorted it all out into something that was ultimately a lot more coherent on paper than being spoken. If love were subject to logic, it would have been an undeniable proposition. Alas, love is not logic. I was denied, albeit in the most (frustratingly) polite and soft-handed manner possible. Her reasons were just as legitimate as mine. I hate it. Now I must somehow figure out how to recover and move on again, for this is not the first time this has happened. I still love her and I honestly hate that I do. This love, this hindrance to my ability to function at a reasonably high level, this drain that saps my energy and motivation and emotional health so efficiently... I hate it, yet I so desperately want it.

I don't know what I'm going to do. She said not to wait on her, as she does not know how long her, for lack of a better term, sabbatical will last, but I wouldn't be surprised if I end up doing just that. Waiting, because I am afraid of approaching another, afraid that I won't find someone else as wonderful, kind and caring as her. I've loved other girls before, but none have ever returned the friendship that I gave them, not to anything close to this degree, anyway. I don't have faith that there will be anything for me through the Church - every Singles ward or branch I've ever attended has either been like my current, nice but generally too old for me, or like the others, dismissive and unengaging, full of young people who display no interest in getting to know me. Besides, anyone that I would have any interest in will already be taken, as it were. That's just how it goes for me.

I feel silly complaining about this like I'm one of the several nearly thirty year old single individuals in my ward - I'm only 24 - but... It still drains on me just as much. I'm certain that I will find someone some day, but I fear that it will be a compromise against myself to stem the loneliness that I feel rather than being what I need and am looking for. Perhaps I'm not so certain, after all. I just don't know.

I hate being in love.