Haunting Love

[work notes]

A friend asked me today if I had suggestions about being haunted by a love you are no longer with...

This question made me smile, and for a lot of reasons. Because, yes, I have been haunted by a such kind of love. Even if it was a somewhat adolescent one, the sort of which makes you giggle, when the 30 something years old draw near. But now that I think of it, this kind of love is maybe more haunting than any adult ones. Because to think of love, you think about love with your hopelessly romantic mind, you talk about forever without thinking about marriage, you talk about love without relating it to sex, and if sex comes to the mind, well sometimes you cannot make the difference between the emotions raging on you. This kind of love, dare I say passion, when I comes to an end (and 9 times out of 10, it will), leaves a feeling of destruction deep inside.

Reading a member post in a forum, knowing she is about 17, lost a bf, I could perfectly relate without being able to say anything. Because, you see, some wounds, even if forgotten from long on, can still leave a trace in the soul.

Back to that summer of 95, when I knew I wouldn't see him anymore. The missed rendez-vous, the air of guilt in his face when I caught him back at the train station, told me with more certainty than words that I was never to hear from him ever again. He was my first love, it lasted 3 months in my sweet sixteen HS years, but at 18, I still haven't gotten over him.

Two years of constant presence with him, seeing him with other girls, him being afraid to tell me about them, a constant hide and seek party with my feelings. I used to say to my friends that I lived through him, that I was nothing without him. I had misunderstood love for addiction, for drowning myself into a feeling that was no longer here. I was in love with love instead of being in love with someone.



The feeling of miss was acute though. Like a part of my heart ripped off, living like a robot, eating because mom told me so, studying because hell, that was so part of the game. Going back home with him as an obsession, writing letters (I still have them) unsent, passionate writings I do not even dare re-read now. He was the first guy I told "I love you" to. Puppy love kind. The one that makes you sense the power of feelings your brain cannot comprehend.

[***Never talking about flings I never have the guts to spoke to, here comes my second sweet mistake. The friend/brother I had feelings for, did confess to, but never said I love. There is a flavour of incest about it I have never recover entirely from, so to speak***]

The second time I said I love you was last summer. You could say "coup de foudre", as the French goes. A man, sensible, handsome, and who revealed things in me I never had been aware of. He was giving me confidence, he was giving me friendship, he was giving me more than that. He was giving me so much I could not believe it was true. And as I was keeping the little secret, dreaming, a bit afraid, of what the consequences could be, I said “I love you”, without being aware of what this could trigger. The story ended, two months later. For reasons more complicated than I thought they were. I was ravaged. Something in me had died. Though I had no hard feeling, my reason telling me it was, all in all, the best of ending. I made a brave woman of me. I kept on smiling at days, crying at nights. I kept on talking, staying sensible, until that day of December when I wrote my secret fear. I was game to him, he was the only responsible. He read it. I hurt him. December 1 to December 6 were the worst days of my life. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t work. I refreshed endlessy my mailbox, waiting for an answer. Asking for forgiveness. I hated myself as I never did. And the good moments were nagging on me like knives. I was no better than others, as jealous as everyone. I couldn’t forgive his moving on, while I was stuck in my sadness.

I found solace and comfort on a friend’s shoulder. A person that fascinated me, a person I was happy to be accepted by. As the situation settled slowly with my summer love, the waters grew darker and darker in my heart. I wrote a letter as a last chance to set things clear. I never said "I love" though. Because I knew deep inside this wasn’t love. I knew this would never be.

I must say that I received the most extraordinary answer. The best rejection letter I could have dreamt of. A letter that somehow put an end to those two stories intertwined, at a many levels. It gave me peace at heart, it made me understand that your actions always reflected upon you the same way you triggered it. It made me understand, maybe, the difference between feelings and actions. It set the counter to nil, leaving my heart all fresh and ready. A heart with scars, but that did healed perfectly. Visible still, but not scary.

Of course, those passed love still are somewhere in me. They made me the person I am now. And the man I am with now can see the mix of it all, the person I am, balanced with her genuine feelings that have never changed (passionate I am, passionate I will be), and balanced with the consequences of the mistakes she made.

* * * * * * * * * * *

[Haunted love]

More than “haunting”, I would say “haunted”.

I made this long intro to kinda clear things of.

I think that being haunted by a former love is the worst imprisonment you could think of. You are caught in between feelings that are real, and a situation that isn’t anymore. Your mind is blocked on a “what if” mode, you keep on thinking about the good moments, and you kinda forget expressly the bad ones. You are not yourself, but the self you were with him/her, and now deprived of that second part of you.

Somehow, you cannot but live through the others. You need social feedback to set your actions in reality. You need acknowledgement or dismissal to set yourself balanced amongst the people you are with. Somehow, you are yourself the best amongst your peers, as odd as it might sound.

Haunted love are like invisible chains you set yourself around your ankle. It it what dictates your behaviour, your feelings (who haven’t felt attracted by someone simply because he/she reminded of a lost love?), your thinking , everything. The more you gonna try to break free, the more that lost love will make feel its toll upon you.

I would say that haunted love is like a wild animal. You have to tame it. A bit like the fox, in the “Little Prince” story. If you stick to it, it will engulf you. If you reject it, it will make you feel guilty. But if you tame it, take it as it is, a story that’s over, but that left marks, then you can start to heal. Hand in hand with your love that is not haunted anymore.