On Love

Let’s say you’re madly in love with someone, and suddenly one day this someone says that he or she does not love you anymore. You moan, cry, scream, rant and rave. That’s not the worst part. The worst part is the realization that your love does not go away. Here you are, left with these useless feelings and nothing to do with them. The best analogy I came up with for something that only works when shared is those friendship necklaces girls give each other. They usually have something like “Best Friends” imprinted on a circle, which is then cut into jagged halves. Each “best friend” wears half. The halves would fit back together perfectly if the friends were to stand nearby each other. But imagine that these are beautiful, rare pieces of jewelry, designed by the world’s most famous jewelry designer. They are museum-quality; encrusted with precious gems.

When the day comes that your special someone decides that he or she wants nothing more to do with you, what do you do with your half of the necklace? It’s all yours once again, but this is awkward and difficult because it’s meant to be shared. Out of anger, you could try to destroy and ruin this rare, valuable, special thing. Then, something beautiful and precious would be lost to you and the world. Worse still, it can never be disposed of. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, this twisted, ruined, corrupted thing keeps turning up, usually at the most inopportune moments.

Another option would be to keep it and obsess over it, filling your days with nothing but staring at it. You grow isolated and alone as others tire of your fascination with it. You may even lose all dignity trying to reunite the halves of the necklace. But this is a pointless and counterproductive exercise, and all you end up with is a lost self and a restraining order.

The third option is to keep it somewhere safe, yet work hard at preventing it from being the focus of your every thought and action. Over time (and this usually takes A LOT of time), it becomes less and less in the forefront of your mind. It finds its way into some box under your bed, covered in dust. Then one day someone else comes along, and lo and behold! He or she has the other half of another pair of necklaces. You get yours out and dust it off. The time has come to share it with someone else, and its beauty has been preserved for that person. It’s very hard at first because you are constantly reminded of the one you shared it with before. But as you spend time with your new someone, who in your mind is wonderful and perfect and superior to the old someone in every way, you forget the old someone a little. Then more and more, until most days, then months, then years pass without you thinking of the old someone even once. Your necklace comes to represent all the good things between you and your new someone- all the memories and laughs. Your necklace is not worse off for being old and having been through so much. On the contrary, it is even more rare and valuable, like a grandmother’s antique wedding ring worn by a new bride.

Now, if for some reason you are reminded of the old someone, you can choose to look back and see only the good things because there isn’t a broken, twisted necklace lying in wait somewhere, turning up again and again like a bad penny and ruining your day with its ugliness. Only representative of hurt and pain.

This is healing. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting, or burying, or getting rid of, or twisting the meaning of it in anger. Healing means transforming it into something you can live with, learn from, build on, and maybe be better for the next time around. Your love is a good and beautiful part of YOU that you give to someone else. Someone else can accept or reject it, but if they reject it, don’t give them the power to destroy that beautiful part of you. You cannot hurt that person anymore. You can only hurt yourself.

I’d imagine that someone at the end of their life would have collected a lot of half-pairs of necklaces. They would vary in value and degree of intricacy. Those who hold the other halves of the necklaces would not have them if this person had not existed. This person leaves in his or her wake a legacy of bits and pieces of valuable things. Some people naturally recognize the value, and recognize that they are better off for having it. Some do not, and throw them away or pawn them yet wind up with a poorer soul. Whether or not there is a heaven, perhaps we cannot know. But at least we can be certain that the bits of ourselves that we leave behind with others remain. In this way, we do have control over our “afterlife.” We are in complete control of how many necklaces we leave.