“What Love is Not.”

Love.
Love is not beautiful. It’s not pretty at all. While sometimes euphoric, love is not a good thing.
Love is a drug. It sedates you and fucks up your mind, tricking you into thinking you need more of it. I’d rather be addicted to heroin. I repeat, I’d rather be addicted to heroin than have to deal with that four letter word above. At least then I know I’d be able to quit, through rehab or a 12-step. Love is a losing game. A lose-lose situation for all parties involved. Love is a scare tactic. Love is an entrapment. Love is not what it should be.

What everyone thinks love should be is peace. Whispers in the wind on a soft summer day, the breeze through the leaves on the trees. Love should be blissful and ignorant. A spiritual connection between you and your significant other or others. Monogamy is not required, you can love more than one person and still give everyone an equal amount. Love is a mirage. Nothing but two smoking mirrors placed directly in front of each other, faced in front of each other. You could call me biased seeing as all of my experiences in love have either been one sided or hellish broken relationships, but I’m not the only one who shares this opinion.

Love is communism. You heard me correctly, every single one of you who are happily married is in a communist relationship and your significant other is the leader. I mean unless you’re a woman. But I don’t want to close off that door because sometimes it IS the other way around.
That joint bank account you have with your wife? Communism. What’s mine is yours? Communism? Always we and not just you? Communism. Always having to take your plans and think for two? Communism. Love is not a beautiful exchange of one’s knowledge, passions, opinions, hopes, fears, wins and losses. Love is an upper hand and always has been.

For centuries, love has been used to manipulate and move those who are less deserving up the ranks in which they seek to be a part of. Hypergamy/Hypogamy as google would call it.
We see it happen so much that it’s basically become second nature, especially in the black community. I’m not saying we all do it, but nine times out of ten, you’ve heard one of your elders go,

“Girl you better marry that man, he got money”
“You dumb, you could’ve never had to step foot in your job again!”

Love was never what the Webster definition defines it to be.
There are 4 definitions, two nouns and two verbs, and they read as follows;

1. An intense feeling of deep affection.
2. Great interest and pleasure in something.
3. Deep affection for someone.
4. To like or enjoy very much.

Now, I don’t know about you, but something seems kind of off.

Let’s start with the first one.

“An intense feeling of deep affection.”

I’m gonna start with the last word here, which is affection. Affection is described as being “a disposition or state of mind or body”, and as soon as you read it the first thing you hear is disposition. Disposition here meaning to be a character trait, habit or tendency. We all know what feeling means but if you don’t here it is. In the positive sense, a feeling can be an emotional reaction, but for people who don’t emotionally react, how would you know what feeling was? Questions for later. On the more negative side of things, feelings are a belief, especially a vague or irrational one. I never thought someone asking you if you believed in love in middle school could go so deep. To feel is a sensation, and if I keep going like this we’ll be here all night but you get my point. The first definition of love boils down to a really strong sensation that you subconsciously act on. So the real question for people who align with definition one is, how many times has your subconscious been right? Because I know that nine times out of ten, it’s been wrong more times than it’s been right.

Now, number two.

“A great interest and pleasure in something”

I’m going to contradict myself here. I love music. It’s been my passion since I was a small boy and something I still practice and hold dear to my heart to this day. Throughout high school I skipped parties, sadies, prom, homecoming, etc., and stayed at home making music. I didn’t hang out with friends and if I did, we were making music or it was over the internet through discord voip with people I’ve never met before. My love for music isn’t a feeling though, more a habit that turned into an addiction once I got the hang of it. I take great pleasure in making the music I make and since I still don’t know everything I have a great interest in learning more about how I can perfect my craft.

I LOVE music. I could marry music without a prenup if you asked me and most people feel this way about their significant other, but the real question is how long will you feel this way about them? You see, I’ve been in my relationship with music since I was three years old and my great-grandmother bought me my first drum set at a yard sale. I remember it like it was yesterday, candy red paint with the toms at the top and the snare right beneath. I used to bang on them like there was no tomorrow.

I’m twenty now. It’s been seventeen years and I’m still infatuated and in love with music and I know that people have been married for longer than that, but what are the odds that in seventeen years you still love that person exactly the same as you did the first time you said it and meant it? People are married for 50+ years and have separate rooms, don’t talk to each other, and just kind of co-exist in the same household. That’s not love. I used to sleep in the same living room as my drumkit after I first got it until my grandma told me to stop.

Love is Devotion. An undying fire of needing to learn and memorize every tiny minute detail about the thing you love. Love is more than obsession. Love is Dedication. No matter what happens you’ll always find yourself magically led back to what you love. Most people are incapable of loving another person like this for more than a short time. That’s why they call it the honeymoon phase. Taking great pleasure in being around someone and being fully interested in what they have going on for the long run? That’s my definition of real love.

I would go deep into three and four but I’d just end up restating my previous points. What I’ll do is form my opinion about human love. Human love is not what Love is. Human love is communism, a means to receive opportunities you’d otherwise never have a chance to. Love is a manipulation tactic masked in perfume, nights out, great sex and the promise of unconditional love. In truth, human love is never unconditional, not even from parents. Human love is codependency, trauma projection, suffering in silence to make your significant other happy disguised as compromise, amongst other things. Human love is incapable of being real love because most of the time it’s unrequited, vain and riddled with judgements. Human Love is What Love is Not.

15/4/2022 9:00PM Elijah Winston