Thanks to Art, I've taken to watching Ugly Betty, which is heartwarming, brainless entertainment most of the time. Not what I'm accustomed to watching but nice all the same.
Just caught episode 10 - I guess most people would call it the Love episode. I'd call it the Hormones Run Wild episode.
The various characters find themselves inbroiled in their own notions of who they are in love with, seemingly defined by "hearts racing, palms sweaty" and having one's breath taken away. It's all a very sweet episode, makes you ache, makes you want to fall in love. In other words, it depressed the hell outta me when I was done watching it.
Just a few years ago, I'd have called that falling in love too. Now, I call it falling in infatuation.
In the past year or so, I've come to realise that being in love with someone isn't just about that hormonal, euphoric rush anymore. It had become a constant knowing, that warmth that filled me and made me whole knowing I had my life's complement.
In a long-term relationship, that rush can be revived with a little prodding. It can be experienced with any other person if you choose. It can be felt in vivid fantasies. What is it worth then, if it can be so easily found in any old place you choose to conjure it? It's little more than teenage puppy love.
It's a drug, and that's exactly how your brain chemistry is programmed to perceive it in the first place. It's part of your brain's reward system as we have evolved to seek and enjoy potential partners that may one day help us carry on populating the earth. And drugs are not to be trusted. Many people get hooked on to that feeling of falling for someone new, hence the birth of serial daters and, if they don't grow out of it, serial cheaters.
So now, I'm almost dreading the heady rush of falling for someone new, because I'm afraid it might feel fake and fleeting, like the initial rush of meth hitting you or the first taste of a divine piece of chocolate on your tongue. I won't know whether it is love or infatuation, since most romantic and/or erotic encounters start with that same high. It could lead to a life-changing love affair or a soul-crushing, short-lived nosedive.
Something constant, something firm, something you don't need a high to enjoy, something that completes you, something that is so much a part of you that you no longer try to explain it - that is worth so much more, worth your life and your soul.
I crave the rush, and I dread it. I've never felt like this about Love/Infatuation before, and it scares me.
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