_The Dark Side Of Love_

What is love, after all?
This question has been asked and answered to a million of times by love experts, poets, writers and psychologists. Everyone tries to romanticize it, only a few venture into describing the ‘dark side’ of it.
I’ve been asking myself the same question for a long time.

You see, I, too, used to believe in the ‘fairytale’ version of it, the ‘beautiful side’ of it, the ‘hearts-and-flowers’ version. The version that always ended in ‘happily-ever-afters’ and that always ended up making you crave for them with an obsessive yearning. The version that almost every movie or book describes. The version, where you see everything through rose-colored glasses and you only see rainbows and flowers, sweet-nothings and smiles everywhere. The version where a guy meets a girl, they instantly click, they fall in love, they get married after a little convincing of the parents and after that, they all lived happily-ever-after…
But it’s not true. It’s not real. The love they show on screens and write books about rarely exists in this dark, hypocritical, cruel and materialistic world. And those who succeed in finding that kind of love are lucky enough to have found Paradise on this slowly-dying planet.
But love, I’ve come to find, is not beautiful, at all, for some unfortunate souls. It is sometimes the personification of their worst nightmares, ones they only ever wish to stop reliving night after night and stop dreaming about day after day.
So, I’m going to describe that version of love today, ‘the dark side of love’, as I call it. I’m sure I won’t be the first one to write about it nor will I be the last. But I feel like I should describe it in all its dark splendid glory. So, here it goes:
Love… What is this four-lettered word, after all?
Is it losing the ability to even breathe when he/she is not there with you? Or that feeling of your soul ripping into shreds when you know you can’t have him/her? Or the broken feeling you get when you know that your love was never enough, that it will always be half-complete, that you’d always be in a limbo between wanting him/her and trying to forget him/her, that your love will always remain unrequited, unfulfilled, unreturned? Or the utter feeling of defenselessness where he/she is concerned? Or is it that stupid feeling of weakness and vulnerability where you feel like you are no more stronger or coherent, even to your own self, than a newly born baby?
What is it?

Does it ever make you feel stronger, more focused, more complete, whole…?

I don’t think so.

It makes you cry during the dark, lonely nights while you clutch your pillow to your chest and it makes you curl into a ball as you desperately try to hold off the pain. And it makes you hurt with a hurt so deep and intense that it rips your soul apart and it destroys your sense of self-preservation, self-respect and self-love.
It leaves you with nothing.

It leaves you even more alone than you ever were before. It takes away the color from your life so that all you can see is black and grey. It takes away the taste from your food so that everything you eat tastes like cardboard. It zones you out from important conversations, leaving your head filled with the buzzing bees of his/her thoughts alone. It does not strengthen you. It only ever weakens you.
It kills you.

Like cancer slowly spreading through your body. You come to know of its presence when it has already embedded itself so deep inside your blood cells, veins and organs that you can only ever accept its presence, admit your defeat and learn the cold harsh truth that you cannot fight it. You cannot forget it. You cannot escape from it.
Love does not empower you. It enslaves you. It takes away your choice. It makes you a slave to memories. It makes you so weak that you would accept whatever scraps he/she throws at you. It makes you hate yourself even when it glories in its destructive power over you.
It mocks you.

It throws you so deep into the chasm of heartache that you can only lie there, aching, accepting, waiting for the next fix of heartache. Because you’d rather have your heart broken again and again than never to feel alive again. Because that’s what love does. It makes your heart beat only for him/her; otherwise you might as well feel like your heart might never have been present inside your chest at all.
It numbs you and yet it cuts you with sharp talons of misery and despair. It makes fools of us who dare to believe in fairytales and happy endings. Because it’s not beautiful; it’s ugly. It’s hurtful. It kills. It destroys.
And yet if you ask someone who has experienced ‘the dark side of love’, the chance to rewind the past and make him/her never meet the person they’re in love with; their answer would be a firm ‘NO’. Because when you truly love a person, you do not ask them to love you in return when you fall for them.
There are no conditions, no bargaining in love. It is unconditional. Irrevocable. Unquestioning. Indubitable. It just is. Right there. A big and unignorable part of your life.
You cannot ignore it anymore than you can ignore the rising sun. And after a while, you learn to accept its presence. You stop fighting it. Stop trying to forget about it. And you finally learn to accept the unchangeable and absolute truth that this is what life has given me and this is what I should be thankful for. For there are many who spend their lives without ever feeling this absolute wonder and miracle that is called love.

As Tennyson so beautifully describes;

“Tis better to have loved and lost,

than never to have loved at all.”

So, don’t ever let love pass you by without catching it, cherishing it, and loving it. For you do not find love around every corner in your life. Then again, who knows which version yours turn out to be – the fairytale one or the dark one. But whichever it is, understand this that what life has gifted you with is not something that everyone gets.
Feel privileged. Feel obliged. Feel humbled. And above all, feel proud that you have a heart, no matter how battered, broken or bloodied it is, that… love.

K.A. Qureshi