All of today’s blather on love (or something like it,) (see what I did just there?) reminded me of the illustration posted above, which has been squatting on my desk-top since I first read it on Brain Pickings. (How novel and accurate it was. Self-respect does seem to be the unsung secret to good sex).
I can get behind most of it–even argue that the symptoms she describes when diagnosing a cold case of The Loves are wholly capable of being felt under unilateral circumstances. And though I don’t mean to argue with the woman who wrote “Notes on Camp” and may or may not have functioned as the redeeming quality in one such University class called “The White Plague: A History of Tuberculosis,” I can’t really believe that loves mean willing to ruin yourself for someone else.
Romantically, maybe. Unrequited love stings worse than a paper-cut under acid rain. And that is, after all, the sequestered case in which I’d be willing to ruin myself, right? Unrequited love? But is that as poignant as love of the requited variety? Is it even really love? Let’s just get Valentine’s Day jargon out of the way now: what is love? (Baby don’t hurt me.)
