On The Subject of Love
Sep. 28th, 2004 07:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
From The Sandman -- The Kindly Ones
Rose: Love...Have you ever been in love?
Desire: You might say that.
Rose: Horrible, isn't it?
Desire: In what way?
Rose: It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it hopens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "Maybe we should just be friends" or "How very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.
Desire: How picturesque.
Rose: It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.
Desire: I think I preferred you, granddaughter, when you were stoically complaining about not feeling anything.
*****
In The Sandman, I've almost immediately identified with the character of Rose Walker. She's this little girl that all this weird shit happened to (she uses that exact term, weird shit) and it's hardened her into taking this very objective, detached view of everything. She never gets emotionally involved, even in her relationships. When the inevitable break-up happens, it might leave her boyfriend in a John-Cusack-in-Say-Anything crying funk through the streets of any random city or town, but she sits back and wonders why she doesn't care. She's been through all the approximations of love, everything that love is supposed to be, but she's never actually been *through* it.
In a weird shit moment she gets a call saying that her (presumably dead) grandmother wants her back in England, where she'll give Rose the heart she had to give up in order to save her life and the Dreaming. (Don't ask, long story.) She gets there, has a fling with her attorney, who turns out to be married, and suddenly she gets it: the express ticket to love by the wrong side of the tracks. Rose eventually *does* meet her 'grandmother,' who is actually Desire from the Endless, the person who fathered/mothered Rose's mom in sleeping Unity Walker some time before. Desire's going to give Rose her heart, but Rose reveals that she's already got it, because it was broken.
Arguably, you could say that Rose had her heart all along, that she just built all this stuff around it until it was as good as removed. All it takes is one person to sneak through all of that and suddenly you're wandering around in unfamiliar territory, where you're not in control any more. Not completely.
I'm finding myself in much the same situation, and I can identify with Rose's fear. She doesn't *really* hate love -- I think that's just a 'some-man-done-done-me-wrong' statement. But she *is* afraid of it, and all the many many ways it can go wrong and mess you up. She's afraid of the kind of hurt that it can cause, and it can cause *real* pain.
Stopping to think about it, I've had my heart broken -- really broken -- twice. Once by my sister when she ran away, once by a boyfriend who treated our break-up as nothing really momentous (and by extension, our whole relationship as the same). Each time it was...agonizing. I actually know what would drive a wolf to gnaw off a limb; it's a sharp, persistent pain that's too basic to ignore. You can't shake it off, you can't just put it out of your mind...it's too fundamental. That's what she means by 'soul-hurt.' And while I hate using another author's words to actually put my point across, I think Gaiman nails it perfectly here.
Since that one boyfriend-breakup, I can safely say that I had never been truly in love. I've thought that I was in love, but it was more an approximation; it was the closest I had come to being truly in love at that time. Knowing this makes me feel bad, because it hurts some people who really don't deserve it. At the same time, I have to be honest.
How do I know I'm in love *this* time? The same kind of fear that Rose describes: the knowledge that someone has made it through all the fortifications to make sure you'd never get hurt again, and now they reside in a place fundamental. After the initial euphoria of being touched in such a sensitive spot, your eyes widen: "Oh fuck. I'm really screwed now."
I've seen so many people say the same things before: "Oh, I had no idea what love is before now!" or "Everything else feels like practice, but *now* I know this time is different!" I find myself thinking of the same exact phrases every love-struck teenager has thought about since the dawn of time. There's something disturbing and comforting about the repitition; true love and all of its expressions is probably the most well-documented emotion ever explored. All the old axioms are completely true, even if they've been reworked so many times they mean nothing.
Am I taking this too fast? Am I going too deep, too quickly? What if he *does* find someone better? Am I going to be able to keep up with him? Am I spending enough time? Should I call? Am I being too clingy? Should I apologize for that? Questions and doubts keep popping up, relentlessly, about whether I'm even worthy to be affected in such a way. What have I done?
Love goes wrong when it's poisoned by fear. Unfortunately, fear is a quite natural reaction to reaching unknown territory. Rose, I think, blames love for something that only fear really gives you.
It's been a while since I've explored all of this, and really, I think all it takes is to let go. Fear is, I think, the result of trying to attach too strongly to the ideal outcome. You can't really enjoy something if you're worried about it leaving when it's right there. When it's with you, enjoy it; when it's gone, miss it. It's a simple idea enough to grasp intellectually, but a devil to try and live by.
I'm in love. I'm also afraid. And the only reason I'm struggling with it is it's completely new. I'd like to say I'm fearless, but I haven't burned away mortality at all just yet. <:) Learning to deal with fear, I suspect, is one of the way love changes you without ever meaning to.
Rose: Love...Have you ever been in love?
Desire: You might say that.
Rose: Horrible, isn't it?
Desire: In what way?
Rose: It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it hopens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "Maybe we should just be friends" or "How very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.
Desire: How picturesque.
Rose: It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.
Desire: I think I preferred you, granddaughter, when you were stoically complaining about not feeling anything.
*****
In The Sandman, I've almost immediately identified with the character of Rose Walker. She's this little girl that all this weird shit happened to (she uses that exact term, weird shit) and it's hardened her into taking this very objective, detached view of everything. She never gets emotionally involved, even in her relationships. When the inevitable break-up happens, it might leave her boyfriend in a John-Cusack-in-Say-Anything crying funk through the streets of any random city or town, but she sits back and wonders why she doesn't care. She's been through all the approximations of love, everything that love is supposed to be, but she's never actually been *through* it.
In a weird shit moment she gets a call saying that her (presumably dead) grandmother wants her back in England, where she'll give Rose the heart she had to give up in order to save her life and the Dreaming. (Don't ask, long story.) She gets there, has a fling with her attorney, who turns out to be married, and suddenly she gets it: the express ticket to love by the wrong side of the tracks. Rose eventually *does* meet her 'grandmother,' who is actually Desire from the Endless, the person who fathered/mothered Rose's mom in sleeping Unity Walker some time before. Desire's going to give Rose her heart, but Rose reveals that she's already got it, because it was broken.
Arguably, you could say that Rose had her heart all along, that she just built all this stuff around it until it was as good as removed. All it takes is one person to sneak through all of that and suddenly you're wandering around in unfamiliar territory, where you're not in control any more. Not completely.
I'm finding myself in much the same situation, and I can identify with Rose's fear. She doesn't *really* hate love -- I think that's just a 'some-man-done-done-me-wrong' statement. But she *is* afraid of it, and all the many many ways it can go wrong and mess you up. She's afraid of the kind of hurt that it can cause, and it can cause *real* pain.
Stopping to think about it, I've had my heart broken -- really broken -- twice. Once by my sister when she ran away, once by a boyfriend who treated our break-up as nothing really momentous (and by extension, our whole relationship as the same). Each time it was...agonizing. I actually know what would drive a wolf to gnaw off a limb; it's a sharp, persistent pain that's too basic to ignore. You can't shake it off, you can't just put it out of your mind...it's too fundamental. That's what she means by 'soul-hurt.' And while I hate using another author's words to actually put my point across, I think Gaiman nails it perfectly here.
Since that one boyfriend-breakup, I can safely say that I had never been truly in love. I've thought that I was in love, but it was more an approximation; it was the closest I had come to being truly in love at that time. Knowing this makes me feel bad, because it hurts some people who really don't deserve it. At the same time, I have to be honest.
How do I know I'm in love *this* time? The same kind of fear that Rose describes: the knowledge that someone has made it through all the fortifications to make sure you'd never get hurt again, and now they reside in a place fundamental. After the initial euphoria of being touched in such a sensitive spot, your eyes widen: "Oh fuck. I'm really screwed now."
I've seen so many people say the same things before: "Oh, I had no idea what love is before now!" or "Everything else feels like practice, but *now* I know this time is different!" I find myself thinking of the same exact phrases every love-struck teenager has thought about since the dawn of time. There's something disturbing and comforting about the repitition; true love and all of its expressions is probably the most well-documented emotion ever explored. All the old axioms are completely true, even if they've been reworked so many times they mean nothing.
Am I taking this too fast? Am I going too deep, too quickly? What if he *does* find someone better? Am I going to be able to keep up with him? Am I spending enough time? Should I call? Am I being too clingy? Should I apologize for that? Questions and doubts keep popping up, relentlessly, about whether I'm even worthy to be affected in such a way. What have I done?
Love goes wrong when it's poisoned by fear. Unfortunately, fear is a quite natural reaction to reaching unknown territory. Rose, I think, blames love for something that only fear really gives you.
It's been a while since I've explored all of this, and really, I think all it takes is to let go. Fear is, I think, the result of trying to attach too strongly to the ideal outcome. You can't really enjoy something if you're worried about it leaving when it's right there. When it's with you, enjoy it; when it's gone, miss it. It's a simple idea enough to grasp intellectually, but a devil to try and live by.
I'm in love. I'm also afraid. And the only reason I'm struggling with it is it's completely new. I'd like to say I'm fearless, but I haven't burned away mortality at all just yet. <:) Learning to deal with fear, I suspect, is one of the way love changes you without ever meaning to.
