Emotional Cruciation:
I reckon most people have a part of their life which is painful for them---with subsequent irreparable emotional damage. This alone justifies giving others a little space which otherwise might not be deserved. In some cases this pain resurfaces while watching certain movies---movies which are too close emotionally to a past painful situation. Pain of this nature never really goes away---it is like etched in stone upon your psyche. This kind of pain can arise from various tragedies----from health events, to physical limitations, to bad situations in formative years, to career failures, etc. For me it involves personal loss. Some tragic losses are expected. You know, for example, your parents are eventually going to die. You know your pet will die. You know you will get old. You know you cannot be a famous singer if you just don't have the talent to be one, etc. But there are sometimes losses for which you are blindsided, losses which are forced losses, losses which can be attributed in part to your own weakness, losses because of your own poor choices, losses because of your own selfishness, losses based on the intolerance and ignorance of others. For me it was a composite of all the latter---a grandaddy of a grand slam.
'This too will pass' does not apply to certain kinds of losses. If you ever have watched a movie in which two unique people, against all odds, find 'true love' you are inescapably touched. These kind of movies should end right there. Some do. But many movie directors blow the magic all up with tragedy and circumstances which force the 'true love' to implode or be terminated. You are left sad and angry, like why did it have to end this way? I think most people like good endings. Certainly I do. We all want good endings for our own 'true love' stories.
Being caught in the middle of a forced implosion of a 'true love' is to have your emotional state twisted into a pretzel and permanently scarred. Certain treasured emotions you will never be able to recreate again in a new setting with new entanglements, hampred instead by dead zone emotional scars. Your inner world will never ever be the same. You will be emotionally handicapped in one aspect of your life---FOR LIFE. Your life, no matter how successful otherwise, will always have to work around this peculiar emotional dead spot zone.
BUT, granting all of this, it is not all bad. "It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all". Or so it is said. If anything might be undefinable, it is "true love". I wonder what percentage of us even have that emotional fortune? Whatever true love might really be, it puts one person at the center of your own vaporous life as the most important person in your life---the person from whom you learned the most, who best complimented your own emotional state, the one who understood you the best, brought the best out of you, and made your life the most meaningful. The relationship between love and sex has been, and still remains, mysterious. 'True love' is like eternal; sex is, for the most part, a youth related engagement which exists as an entity coupled with 'true love' but has a life outside that non-physical bond. One need remember that studies have shown most people experience their strongest orgasms via masturbation---sex with someone you love, to be sarcastic about it. I guess, to the extent this is true, masturbation lets you totally control your own sexual thoughts without any other interference. I reckon true love, almost by definition, has a strong youthful sexual component, but a component which changes over time in intensity, frequency, and methodology of the activity.
Whatever 'true love' is, and if lost through a forced ending, with some personal complicity in that termination---no matter what the reasons for the personal complicity---it will be a haunting loss. I guess one can accept a loss which you could not have prevented, but when such a loss involves your own complicity at some level, it is forever unforgivable---an act of disloyalty which you drag along like a ball and chain for the rest of your life. Even if your own complicity is understandable, maybe even the best of the worst choices, you will never escape personal remorse for abandoning the last person in your life deserving of abandonment. 'It was for the best' will never ring as an acceptable truth.
Strangely, when all the dust settles, you will never be alone again. You will feel the lost 'true love's' presence at all times. The essence of their being is always there, playing a role in so many decisions, so many of your feelings toward others, and events in life. Their guidance through life never ends, their influence on your own persona never ends, and you will never feel less alone than when alone with your thoughts about them. The person will remain more real than anyone else around you, more influential than anyone else around you, and will always be the pillar of strength which allows you to take an unpopular stance---what you feel is the right stance, and free you from the dependence on others for approval. Even from the loss you are still left with immeasurable permanent emotional support, ways of thinking which you will forever treasure, and a past love to lean on which sustains you when life's disappointments are too much in your face.
When all is said and done---said so poorly with little done in the usual sense of done---there remains this truth: if anything is true, as to who your true love really is--- there is no doubt, no debate, no competition, and this becomes one of the few certainties in your life. You are trapped---you simply cannot replace the irreplaceable in matters of entangled adoration.
Something about Jimmy Durante's "Goodnight Mrs. Calabash wherever you are" has always been etched in my mind as the saddest of forlornness. The older I get the longer the list of names which I can add to that phrase, but the one front and center, if there has to be just one, is no contest. It is like the wind, you felt it, but then it was gone; you know it exists somewhere over the proverbial rainbow---a strong force, so strong that you are still being carried along by the vortex of it's power. 'Til death do us part' fits here to a tee. That's about the sum of it.
