"Hear me speak
what's on my mind
Let me give this
testimony
To reaffirm that you
will find
That you are my one
and only
No exception to this
rule
I'm simple but I'm no
fool
I've got a witness
happy to say
Every hour, every
day"
We all say
how lovely love is. I don't mean the kind of love you have for your neighbour.
I don't mean the bond you have with family or the agape love one feels towards
God and others. I speak of romantic love and all that it entails. We spend
almost all of our lives cherishing, cooing and recklessly throwing our feelings
around all because we want to be held and wanted and complete. In fact, we
convince ourselves that loving someone, the act of being in love, is a
wonderful thing. We spend our entire lives in pursuit. When we do not find it,
we just keep hoping, and praying, and wishing. When we do get it, we spend all
our time wishing things were better and asking something up above to make it
all turn out for our benefit. It rarely ever does. The truth is, the primary
reason most people want love is so that they can get laid. Any emotion that
comes with that motivation is hormonal yet not necessarily erotic. That is why
so many relationships just don't last; neither does the passion. Once that goes,
you are all on your own, trapped in a world without coitus, all part of some
artificial avocation.
Not for one
second have I ever stopped loving my first partner Doug. After over twenty
years of weeping at his grave, I have come to recognize that I love him more
now than when he was alive. It seems some
love, apparently, when it is true and real, has a hard habit of lingering. True
love doesn't die, it just changes. His death did not alter the way I feel, it
fortified everything. I still feel exactly the same way now as I always have,
again, perhaps even stronger. When my current partner Ben came along eighteen
years ago, I imagined the two emotional states could not reside in harmony,
they would not and could not co-exist within me. All these years later and I
see how wrong I was. There was something so grand, so precious about my loyalty
and commitment to Doug, that I could not go on without it. I held it, cherished
it, despite how it ended and the act that sealed his doom. The truth is I just never let it go. It was
so significant, so special to me that I learned to live with the pain versus
having the sheer freedom to move past it. I could not continue without him, so
I kept him. I never once vilified him or the experience. In the end, he is now
dust to dust, and nothing I have done or said can change that reality. All the
love in the world has never made a difference. I have come to the conclusion
that it all was for nothing and any expression I have left is fodder for a love
that might as well have never been. Most days, I'm not sure it was worth it.
My commitment
to Ben is as complicated. You cannot be a little bit pregnant. Any sense of loyalty
and dedication I held towards Doug has always been at least equal to that which
I have towards Ben. I could not have loved either one, any more. They have
always mattered just as much, just differently. I am in it for the right
reasons. I always have been. As a matter of fact, it was easy to love
again. At the time, I was astounded at
the simplicity of it all. Apparently, love really does know no limit. It can be
consuming, powerful and overwhelming. These are not necessarily good things.
Over all these years of struggle and strife, for all the time Ben and I have
spent together, I ask myself if love really ever means anything. In the grand
scheme of the universe, how can it matter at all? I don't despise or repel the
notion of love, I simply am not sure that the pain and strife are worth the promised
moments of tranquility that never come. I ask myself if I would have been better
all alone. In no way do I imagine we had never happened. I would not trade it
for anything in the world. I don't rue or wish it away. I just wonder if it
would have been easier to have spent my life focused on different priorities.
If I had never loved, I would have no need to be free from it. I would have
been free from the agony, free from the struggle, free from the constant chaos.
I would have been able to not feel anything, for anyone. Just as I sometimes
wish Doug had never been, I can't help but think my life would have been easier
without the silly, stupid thing called love.
"Every heartbeat
bears your name
Loud and clear they
stake my claim
My red blood runs
true blue
And every heartbeat
belongs to you"
Since Doug's
death, Valentine's Day has not been my favourite holiday. It never really was
in the first place. The day itself is not the problem. Having a commemoration
set aside for the expression of love is never a bad thing. Making a day of it
seems very apropos. Yes, it has evolved into a commercial venture, a cultural cash
grab. At base, Valentine's Day should be redundant. Why do we have to set aside
a day to remember what we should embrace every day? Still, any harm it does in
condoning excess is succeeded by its economic consequence. Regardless of its
modern purpose, every year I am reminded of this most terrible of moments. This
day has become a horror relived. Every flower, every heartbeat is a constant
reminder of the sheer agony the day in question has brought me. My fortitude
does not stop my mind from playing it over and over again in my thoughts.
Throughout the entire gamut, I try to remember where I am now but the plague of
what was is much more powerful than I ever imagined. Every year, I hope I will
not have to relive it. I hope that it has faded away and will no longer haunt
me come the day. Somehow it always does. Over twenty years later and I still
find myself at the mercy of my memory. Sometimes the reality is so harsh that I
wish I was free from it. In the end, perhaps not loving in the first place
would have served me better. It would have been better for both of us, I fear.
It was
almost 48 hours after his death that my mother and I sat down to order flowers
for the funeral. Nelson's Flower Shop still sits in the center of downtown Strathroy , Ontario
"Classic case of
boy meets girl
Moving in the same
direction
You're not asking for
the world
I'm not asking for
perfection
Just a love that's
well designed
For passing the test
of time
I'm here to tell you
I'm here to stay
Every hour, every
day"
Being with someone for almost two
decades means you have to make certain adjustments in your thinking. I can't
always have it my way. Valentine's Day is a prime example. It is the last thing
in the world that I give a shit about. I'd rather chew glass than give in to
the sentiment of the day. I have to fake it. I give my partner Valentine's
gifts and he does the same for me. There are cards, candies and I have even
baked a heart-shaped chocolate cake just for the occasion. I go through the
motions because of my responsibility to my relationship but certainly not out of
some want. Every heart thrown in front of me, every cinnamon candy or sweet red
rose, returns me to that torture room, just on Front Street in my hometown.
Throughout the day, I feel more like Pinhead than
a man who has moved on. I am unsure why this experience,
above all others, lingers with me. I don't know why I make it through the rest
of the anniversaries without such a tactile and physical response. On the day
he died, I am sad and empty. On his birthday, I am blue and resolved. On our
anniversary, I am reflective and resigned. On Valentine's Day, I would rather
rip your face off than see one more fucking flower or witness Cupid making his
play. Every year I get nailed all over again.
"Every heartbeat
bears your name
Loud and clear they
stake my claim
Ask anyone and
they'll tell you it's true
Every heartbeat
belongs to you"
You shouldn't
need hearts and endearments to convince the one you love that you love them.
Valentine's Day should be irrelevant. It matters only on some level of
recognition. Loving someone romantically should be an action, not mere
semantics. Every heartbeat should hold more than candy or flowers. People
convince themselves that a few moments of thoughtfulness are the truest
expression of the love they feel towards their better half. This is just not
within the reality of being human. Love can be an awful place to visit and I
don't understand why some people choose to live there. It is pain and
loneliness and hurt and abandon. More often than not, it is rarely worth the
complication, let alone the chaos. Still, despite the misery loving has brought
me, I find myself carried away on clouds of wonder. I am constantly aware of
all the positives that loving has brought me. There are moments from my life so
powerful, so engulfing that I can barely breathe while they occur. Yes,
romantic love is often more hardship than healing, but it is also the blood
that flows through each of us. While I often wish I had played it safe,
avoiding all that caring for another can bring, I know I would be a lesser man
without it. I am not fond of the deliberate way love rips your soul from your
body and pisses all over it. I would
trade it most days for some semblance of peace. It thrives within me,
regardless of the constant war it rages deep inside my being. All I do know is
that I am cursed and blessed at the very same time. As with everyone else's
experience, love has been a struggle. Unlike with most people, it has been easy
for me to find. Twice over, I have come to know how duplicity rules the heart.
It is both good and bad, happy and sad. I am sure that it might not seem worth
it but it turns out that in the end, it always is.
"Yeah, sure
maybe I'm on the edge
But I love you baby
and like I said
I'm here to tell you
I'm here to stay
Every hour, every day"
(Every Heartbeat, Amy Grant 1991)
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