What's Love Got To Do, Got To Do With It?

What's love, but a second-hand emotion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

Cheezy, I know.

I was talking to a friend about how breaking up is hard to do (full of cliche-like sayings today). I understand how difficult it is, although I will say upfront that I don't quite know what that is like. I'll say it again -- I'm a love virgin. I've never loved (romantically speaking). Perhaps I've been loved, I don't know, but what I've experienced, probably is safe to say that it's not love. I've felt frequently, that I'm incapable of loving another human being. When I was dumped by a boyfriend, I have some chocolate ice cream and that will be that. When my mom gave away my beloved chihuahua, Jjang, I shut myself in my room for two weeks, barely eating a morsel, and cried my eyes out for days. Perhaps no man will be worth as much as a pet to me. I revere Nabee like my own offspring (I don't know how, why, and when it started, but I started referring myself as her mom!), and it's going to be tough to love a man as much as I do my cat.

So obviously, this love is one concept I don't get. Most people tell me that love is something you have no control over, and yet, I have never been bitten by this bug, so the chances of coming down with it must be pretty low. And still, yet, most people I know have experienced love.

Why do people love, and why does it have to be so painful? Tom Cruise says that he's not down with love; he believes in it. Nicole Kidman can't wait to get married again. The ultimate love story ever, Romeo and Juliet, both died for love. Cyrano de Bergerac spent his entire life, loving one woman, all for naught (for his panache, he says). Love is destructive. It's like a drug. You feel the euphoria when you're high on it; you feel the immense discomfort (i.e. pain, unhappiness, hell, etc.) when you go off of it. Is this like a cocaine addiction? If so, I want no part of it, ever, even if there's guarantee that I'll come out of the ordeal alive.

So you may ask, why bother even dating, if I'm so convinced that love is part of the curse from God as the primordial humans were banished from Eden? I mean, I understand the need for companionship -- no matter how seemingly anti-social I can get (believe me people, I'm ultra friendly on-line, while mildly anti-social in real life), I accept the fact that all people are social creatures, craving acceptance from fellow human beings. Living a hermit's life is a life-style not for the faint of heart. But beyond just company, love is a whole new blog entry!

Oh, why do we love and crash and burn? If you remember, a while back, I was close to a relationship. 'A' was a seeming sweetheart who, in reality, was the exact opposite. When I finally realized that whatever we had was completely over (he didn't have the common decency to alert me on the status of our expired acquaintance), I felt used. Betrayed. Bitter. Sour. Definitely not sweet. Perhaps it was too good to be true, I don't know. But I'll be darned if I expose myself that way to another man, leaving myself vulnerable and open!

I've seen way too many broken hearts that take forever to mend. I know myself well, and I know that I am an intense control freak -- I hate being in situations where I don't have the upper hand, like the push and pull of relationships. For me to fall in love, I'll have to abdicate half of that control to the prospective suitor, and I don't know if I can allow myself to relinquish so much. I'm the person who likes to drive because it is one of the rare situations where I can control everything from A to Z. In something like love, I can't do the same -- but I'll be darned if I allow myself to be open to be trampled over and crushed. I don't get tread on. I don't get crushed. Not my scene to play the soap opera victim.

Then again, from what I hear, love is the ultimate experience, one to be had in one's lifetime. I guess I can't make an adequate judgment on what love exactly is, until I've been through it. I just can't believe that people go through this multiple times in their lives! Bunch of masochistic fools, I think. Yet, I pity the fools, because I see so much of their pain and tears and depression and wallowing in self-pity and whatnot. But honestly, I think they pity me for never knowing the joys that the euphoria of love had given them. We'll see who should be pitying and who should be pitied. Love. It's one dangerous game. I won't hold you back if you're going to venture into love; but brace yourself, because you just might get burned. I'll tell you horror stories, if I need to -- but be very aware.