Bohemia Village Voice

By Max Cross (Feb 2011)

Love on a Tropical Island

We each want to experience connection with others and we each connect in very different ways. Some of us don’t feel complete without another to share our lives with, so we’re always looking for a person who fits. We build fantasy upon attraction and circumstance to twist our latest catch into the perfect key for our uniquely locked heart. We base our future on our ideas of what their words mean. Some of us dismiss our wants in favour of the wants of another. This other person can become more important to us than we are to ourselves. We play out the dance we were taught from childhood and we correct any missed steps.

We replay what we know. We get hurt and after a while we dust ourselves off, ready to ride the roller-coaster again, saying to ourselves: “It will be different this next time; I’ve learned so much and I am no longer that man.” Oh yeah? We travel the world in search of it. Together we spend billions to hear stories of it. We each experience it differently yet we nod in understanding to its common name. What the hell is our obsession with Love? I’ve felt there is no greater force on Earth than my love.

My love is the most consuming, self-propagating mass recorded. At times it’s the only thing of importance, the only thing that is “real”. I build a fortress from which I defend my love from all attackers (namely, reality). On reflection, I think I’m ill. It appears to be a viral illness, mental, certainly chronic, and the worst strains are sexually transmitted. In fact, it looks to be an epidemic. Are you experiencing the delusion that someone you’ve just met is the romantic partner for you for the rest of your life? Well, you’re infected. I must have coughed. My immune system is very weak and I keep catching this bug.

I loose years at a time in the delirium. Have you been consumed by love and romance? Have you got less time for friends and family since you met a certain special someone? Are you staying in a painful and destructive relationship? Are you unable to concentrate because you’re thinking about someone all the time? You’re a junky! Let’s not fight this. Lord knows you’ve experienced the withdrawal: the sleeplessness, the weight loss, the self-doubt, the sweats, the tears. We know the high and we know we’re not ourselves when up there. We fool ourselves that we’re better off when high on love, just as the boozehound finds salvation in drink.

Perhaps it’s why they put fluoride in tap water because this love obsession is everywhere. Whatever the cause, next time I’m in withdrawal, I want an adhesive serotonin patch to wean myself off. Or dopamine gum. Something. Anything. No more cold-turkey breakups. Writing this now, I realise how futile trying to get love from another person is. I always want the other to love me. Another cannot give me love in a box for Christmas. There is no transference. The love I receive comes from within me. I am the source of all the love I can feel. You are the source of all the love you can feel.

We may require another person to trigger the love out of us but why should that be the case? Whether it is a drug, an infection, the greatest gift in the universe, or even a curse, of one thing we can agree: For those times we feel love, love is enough, and for a moment we are healed, we are whole and we are truly in love.