Love and Melancholia, in parts

"...love lost is the hardest burden to shoulder, and it's one you can never get under..."

Out of context, it doesn't make much sense, but I honestly can't recall the whole of the quote - I wrote it down, along with some thoughts it inspired, but I cannot find where. Still, I recall how I felt the air thicken around me, a syrup of oxygen, carbon dioxide, all the things we breathe, too heavy to draw in, too heavy to expel, stifling, hot, oppressive.

A kick to the gut, a slap to the psyche, a terrible blow to my already shattered heart.

I just don't understand.

I don't mean the quote - oddly enough, I comprehend that to the bone, although what it means to me and what it may mean to you are likely two different things.

I wonder.

If a love is bent, forced, broken into pieces, can it be mended? Can one put it back together, apply some peculiar cosmic adhesive (perhaps the stuff that binds atoms together), and make it almost whole once more?

If a love changes, grows, burns to ash, is carved and chipped away, can it be reformed into something like its old self? Can it again put down roots, blossom, bear fruit?

Should one even try?

A woman I know said "I love my husband, I care about him, but I can't be married to him any more."

It struck me cold, that.
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In another guise, wearing my more public face and writing with my more public voice, I found another blog, wherein I read a post regarding love. I commented the following:

"...Sigh.

When I got married, I told the poor fool that he should have some reason other than love for going beyond shacking up. Love grows, fades, changes, evolves. It's a living thing, is love, and it doesn't hang in stasis.

Sometimes a body needs something more than love to keep going...because sometimes, a body doesn't love their spouse/partner very much, maybe doesn't like them at all, and having that other something to hold onto while they sort themselves out can mean the difference between tempering the blade and shattering it.

I wish he'd listened. Some of us are not easy to love...or, perhaps, easy to love but not to live with. Try forcing a flame to burn always as it was in the first moment you saw it.

I think that loving another doesn't diminish the love one feels/felt for the first. I think sometimes one needs more than a single person can provide...and I don't refer only to sex. Sometimes, one needs spiritual nourishment, emotional nourishment, a love beyond touching. I think that trying to contain love in one box, one bag, one relationship is like trying to grasp a handful of water - the tighter you squeeze, the less you get and the more you find flowing away.

How sad is it that petty jealousies would interfere with that craved for completion? Is it love that cages the bird? Or is it love that flings wide the door and frees the spirit within, trusting that it will return of its own accord?"

I signed it with this parenthetical statement after my name:

"(who knows only too well that love, bound unto suffocation, can so easily turn to anger, resentment, and bitterness until it has burned itself out into a cold emptiness tasting of ash and scorched metal)(Why yes, I'm familiar with hyperbole, why do you ask?)"

I also commented later, regarding another reader's words:

"When the soul hungers, the heart falters, and why is it so wrong to seek blessed rain when one is parched? How did we come to this, this idea that one may love only one, and then it must be forever?

It's a fine notion, in stories, where people do not change, grow, become different beings in their lifetimes, but out here? In the world not on the pages? It's suffocating!

I don't like mushrooms. Some people do, but I don't. I don't think I can find all I need from one love. Some people can, but I cannot. We are all different, with differing wants and needs - so why is it that I can order a meal without mushrooms and no one bats an eye, but I cannot love more than one at a time without raising a ruckus??

Loving isn't owning. I DO wish more people could see that."

And again, after I signed my name:

"(loving, compassionate, lost, and determined to muddle through somehow"
~~~~~
What does it all mean?
~~~~~
I am struggling to breathe, to sing, to break free of...something...but I fear I am mired. I am afraid to look at myself, or anyone else, and I feel I should lock myself away from society until I can force myself to grow as my gardeners would have me...unnatural though it feels.
~~~~~
I have an old, dear friend, one I haven't seen in years. I could go visit this man who was my teacher, who saved my life with his kindness, compassion, and intelligence...but I do not. Because I hate the way I look, and can't see any beauty with which I may show him I was worth the effort.

One day, I would like to believe that I have, within if not without, something lovely. It's not today, though. Today I am slime-molds and rotting things, and could I part company with myself (like the head and body of the King of the Moon), I would do so swifter than a hawk's stoop.
~~~~~
I'm not fishing for compliments. I am simply opening a festering wound and letting the ugliness pour out, hoping that one day, it will be the last time...that I will drain from myself the extent of this dark putrescence and heal. I fear I will be too old, that it will be too late, and the loving I crave, the loving that I know to be within myself, the loving that I want so desperate to twine with another...well, it will sit untouched, unknown, withered and small in a shadowed corner of my soul.

I wish I could have loved freely, openly, with wanton abandon, when I was young.

I wish I could have been a child, with a child's lightness, and let to grow into womanhood without the meddling of evil hands that sought to shape me elsewise.
~~~~~
I am hurting tonight, and have no arms to hold me and sooth, no voice to murmur, no spirit to draw upon for strength, no one to lean upon feeling safe, cherished, despite my shadows, and I am hurting deeply and with familiarity, and I am weary with it.
~~~~~
What am I to do?

What am I to do...?