The fumes of sighs…

Shakespeare once said “Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs” and after a life time of trying to love and find mutual healthy love I believe it to be true. I used to be a hopeless romantic or actually a hopeful romantic, at least until about a week ago. That’s when the fume of sighs and heartache finally fully asphyxiated me and extinguished any light, spark, or belief in love I had left.

This wasn’t my first time falling in love or my first time feeling its burn and pain. Yet I’ve come to discover that each time I allow myself to fall I seem to fall deeper and land harder than before. My wounds, expectations, and feelings usurp the past no matter the healing or time between such encounters. Each love is a new wound bringing me deeper into regret and closer to death than before.

I finally understand why this generation is so closed off to experiencing love in truest and rawest form of pure emotion, and why this is something reserved for children. It simply just isn’t safe or practical and there aren’t many things that hurt or infect the brain, heart, and soul like that of unrequited love. It simply resides deep within you like a cancerous tumor waiting for the right moment or trigger to surface. The chemo of self occupying yourself in distraction is similar to actual chemotherapy in that it can make you or break you.

I look to the past in my own effort at live chemo or to lobotomize whatever is wrong with me, but in the end it’s to no avail. I’m a 42 year old disabled man residing out of Southern California. I do well given the hand I was dealt above average physique and strength. Some tell me I’m handsome, and I make decent money. If not for this condition that has me walk with crutches and braces I’m sure I’d have easy pickings finding love. Even in spite of everything I’ve managed to have long term meaningful relationships and seven children.

My longest relationship was seven years. The closest stab at a true family I ever had. I was caught up in lust and the excitement of comparability when I met this woman. In fact she wasn’t even my first pick when I came onto the group of women that we met that night. It was a comfort and comparability that I saw in her that made me gravitate toward her. I was at my peak financially and think I gave her a sense of safety and stability that attributed to her seemingly fall in love with me as well.

Ours was a crazy trip as she was bored and often easily aggregated and her short temper especially with my son led me to seek comforts in other places and women. Strangely over time as she grew and evolved I fell more in love and became more committed yet as finances waned so did problems in our relationship. Ultimately it was her lack of love and mean nature to him that would continuously push me away and cause a toxic cycle of repetition. Till one day and two children later we broke contact. She sent me painful messages in a battle to see who could hurt each other more and our communication was no more.

I took two years with nothing serious to finally heal from this and any other wounds in my life. This reflection would rival war and peace or Stephen kings the stand if I shared every instant of heartbreak, unrequited love, or infidelity I’ve experienced in my life. It started in childhood even with my parents but that’s a story to another day. Instead my goal here is to exemplify how each failed attempt at love, destroys us slowly and leaves us broken. Eventually there is a point of no return where love becomes diminished and diluted.

Perhaps this is only my perverse over grandiose view of loving. Maybe I’m wrong in thinking that I will find one true love that will eclipse every one of the past experiences I’ve had. Perhaps it’s my own self destructive notion that tells me that for this experience I will need to surpass my past efforts as well. Still I can’t help but feel the more we have loved and failed that we leave a piece of us in the past and bring a piece of someone else with us into the present. I feel there is no way to combat this and while the lessons we learn may help us love better there is still something that will be diminished.

After the last few weeks I am content to stand with a good portion of modern society that refuses to give themselves fully and love from the heart. I will aim for convenience, safety, and comfort, keeping up walls that rival the Great Walls of China. You see in early January I met someone and allowed myself to fall so hard that there is no recovery. In fact in my final attempt at love there is no pain or hurt. No somewhere that has passed and there is only numbness and emptiness.

You see this was a love that felt so strong and I was so sure it was real I broke all my own rules to see it through. First of all it was long distance. She resided near San Antonio Texas not within driving distance to California and this was something I swore to myself I would not engage in. Yet after a month of heavenly talks I found myself planning a flight to San Antonio with my son for Valentine’s Day. Even with myself still barely recovering from financial hardships I dipped in my savings and prepared a trip that would be amazing.

It was after the flight was booked that I slightly feel my love interest pull back. It was subtle though and soon I’d find myself high in the clouds on the way to see the person that made my heart leap.

I’d arrive late on ValentinValentine’s Day night after missing a flight but the night would still progress in magical fashion. Pulling up and seeing her in splendor it would only take a brief time before our chemistry and feelings took over and we would find ourselves indulged in magic. The next night would be similar fashion. Our first official date would end with a magical night of love making and her melting in my arms. It was at this point in time I was sure we were meant to be.

The next day was the first foreshadowing of the future as the one who I swore was my special person fell quiet and almost silent. Still I convinced myself she just needed rest and time to herself after our intense encounter. So I played the tourist and enjoyed my day. Now it was Saturday and we had planned to attend a rodeo and while I knew she had plans with her family I was under the impression she’d break away in time for the show. Only as the show started she was still wrapped up. This first stab to my heart should have been enough to let me know the truth, but love and life are complex, and just as I was met with this blow she told me to pick her up. Her words might have told me she wasn’t ready for anything serious, but her body engulfed me, accepted me fully, enveloping me and delivering me past heavens pearly gates. I knew ecstasy unhinged as I looked in her eyes and felt our souls intwine.

Unfortunately that climax would be the last of it, as I’d find myself on a rainy plane back to California where I’d feel the remaining flames of passion and a love that I swore was once in a lifetime extinguish ember by ember. Days later I’d see a message from someone else on her page. She said we both talk to her the same. The signs I ask for tell me that an evil power use this third power to keep our love at bay. Still for me it was more than just defeat, and it wasn’t just my heart or mind that took the blow in devastating fashion but my soul itself. For I had prayed on this before venturing out and asked for signs, and to this day signs all tell me that she was the one. In the past I held these signs to be true and let things like this and intuition guide me, much to the criticism of friends and family. Things had always seemed to work out when I reflected on these thing but this time I felt a fall from grace I had yet to experience. So I write these words with a shattered soul.

Is love real I can not say. If you find hold on tight but with caution. For with each failed attempt or every fumble it will be hard to reclaim, especially with the purity it once maintained. As for me I’ve come to the decree that love is for the youth, and we are given only a set amount of chances to claim it and rightfully so. For after a certain point when you’ve seen it all and done it all how can you love the same again. Then maybe you let it all ride on one last try. For me this failure has proven Shakespeare’s words true “Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs” Tte fumes of my sighs have suffocated me, and brought me to my demise although it been a ride filled with equal parts pain and delight. Perhaps its karma for I know along the way I’ve cause my fair share of both pain and delight as well. So I guess with that in mind I can live my life. Knowing that I will never love the same again. I’ll never give all of me, I’ll never fully trust my spirit, or the whim of my intuition, when I hear that whisper telling me she’s the one. I won’t believe the signs from the sky. For loves smokes and fumes of sighs have put out my flames. I don’t know what makes love true, but I do know that sometimes a broken heart is something you can’t undo.