Recipe for JealousyUsing organic emotion only
3 pt Fear
2 pt Anger1
pt Sorrow
A
NOTE: I wrote this as a response to a close friend's blog who was enduring a brief exchange between two lovers regarding one's transgression via telephone with an x-girlfriend. A far less rambling or prosaic attempt at an explanation of my thoughts on the matter will either appear in a postscript edit to this blog entry or a future blog post.
Why does one's past forever threaten another's future? How are two concepts which are both intangeable and arguably unreal altogther allowed to so frequently corrupt the most truthful aspect of our existence?
A deadly way to approach your present happiness with maximum collatoral damage.
Isn't the present built upon and therefore absolutely dependant upon even the most infinitesimal detail of it's history? Would the same present exist at all with even the smallest modification to any event which lead up to it?
Is your lover not but what all his past lovers created and what you now decide to behold? Would he be the same lover gazing at you now if you removed but one piece of that history which conspired so sweetly to craft him? And you? Would you be able to recognize his beauty if he were to pluck those you loved before him from your experience and memories?
Would you respect him if he allowed you to erase even a single piece of him? Would you trust him if he chose to remove a piece of you? Would you feel as honored by his touch if he could only love a bit of you? Could you expect him to feel as warm in your embrace knowing that you would not wrap your arms around all of him to keep him from the cold? Could you expect him to stay if you warmed only those parts of him useful to you and left the rest of him to lie still and dark and out of view?
If he is a project with things still unacceptable to you, with things left to change then don't claim to love him now. Claim only that you could one day love him. Don't claim to love him wholly, but rather that you love only that thing your mind has created for you.
Now. Do you love him? Even all that which is beyond you? Doesn't it follow then that if you love this person now, then you must love all of those things which contributed to him? Which made him that perfect thing which you wouldn't change for the world? Aren't those things more responsible for his perfection than you are?
Didn't they break him in? Didn't they let him loose his awkward teenage lust upon them? Didn't they let him rant and rave and run and hide and return and apologize only to run and rant and rage again? Didn't they strengthen him rather than diminish him? Didn't they cry for him and teach him he mattered? Didn't they open their legs for him to teach him the tender trust of a woman? Didn't they let him batter his unbaptized and frenzied hips against theirs and whisper more love in his ear so he learned to trust? Didn't they want to die when he moved on to show him he mattered to someone?
He will not wound you quite as deeply because of them. He will trust you more willingly and more eagerly seek your trust because of them. He will hold you more tightly because of them. He will caress you in the right places more quickly. He will read your soft breaths and notice the slightest change in your breath more readily because of them. He will know when to treat you gently and when to treat you savagely as a result of them.
He is perfect only because of them. You feel safer with him because of them. You feel loved and trusted and honored and special because of them. You are that much more correct in choosing him because of them.
And you love him now only because of them.
Because you love him you will be inclined to see the beauty he sees. To see your own beauty he reflects back upon you. To see others through his eyes. Perhaps he will show you beauty that you wouldn't otherwise have seen. And you might even love him more for this. For the way he speaks passionately about those things you didn't know you cared about until just then. Just then when he cared enough about you to share them with you.
And so he loved them once too. Can they be so ugly if he had loved them once? Can they be so vile if they too had recognized that deep and smokey quality of his soul that burns your nostrils when you wake against his flesh?
Do you fear that perhaps he once found them as beautiful as he now finds you?
Does the thought of him having shared his passions and visions with another somehow diminish the beauty of their ring in your ears? That he has seen beauty in others diminishes that which he sees in you?
Does it diminish the beauty you see in yourself?
Does not your beauty sit aloft the multitude of others he has cherished? Aren't his tastes more refined, his eyes more keen and his heart less likely to engage in trifling matters now? Aren't you by definition the greater for all of his past? Aren't you by definition the most perfect person he has ever laid eyes upon?
He has built a bed and stacked mattress upon mattress for each and every one he cared for. You lay now with him at the very topmost of this edifice.
But you yourself have placed that pea beneath your back and blame him when it gauges at your flesh.
Perhaps knowing that you sit at the top upon all those past tears and sighs and quiet moments and breakthroughs and experiences indicates that you may not be the topmost rung for eternity. Maybe you dread a day when you might lie beneath another in his life's history. You will perhaps fade to him among his many and lose sight of that unique luster only he is able to remind you of.
That luster. That spark, that explosive genesis. That thing about him that makes your stomach hurt and heart pound and face flush at once. That thing that the other boys don't have which makes them merely toys and distractions. The only thing on earth which can truly remind you that you may not matter at all. If not to him, then to what? A toy?
That luster will surely die regardless of you or him.
They say that the luster will evolve between two people into something much more deep and meaningful. Perhaps. But that deep and meaningful thing will remain consistant and dependable. It will remain. The luster die and never return no matter how 'healthy' or long your relationship lasts with this man.
You will always remember it if you were lucky and aware enough. If you were present. It will eventually become your past even though he remains your present and possibly your future. Eventually though both your future will cease to exist and your present will only become someone elses past. You will exist only to some survivor of you both and only for a while.
Your past will whither and die intact and honor you if you are lucky. It will contort and pervert in the hands of those who choose to remember you in all likelihood. You will not own your past. You will exist only as that which is convenient to another. This is the bargain. You are remembered but only at the whim and to the advantage of those who choose to.
The future is an illusion and you do not own this either. It does not exist, cannot be proven beyond exaggeration of the past and will never actually be. When it arrives at your door and steps through your threshold it disappears into the present as surely as the sun is drown by the sea in that brilliant winter fire as I gaze out of my window on this cold night.
The only thing that is real is that split second when he gazes only into your eyes. That seemingly infinite string of microseconds as you gaze back and recognize how in awe he is of your very existence. As thousands of muscles in his face shift together in the most subtle and uncontrollable way - a dance impossible to practice or perfect by design - a pure and honest orchestra of love reflecting back upon you. Love on motor reflex.
Be careful.
You might miss it
