Several months ago, following a period of intense heartbreak, I decided to run a personal ad on a rather ubiqitious personals site to see if I could, as the old adage goes, "get over an old man by getting under a new one". It was a tempting theory, and living in a tiny town seperated by water on all four sides, it seemed far more likely that I would meet someone 'filling' online over waiting for the one to come riding a white steed across the Overwaitea parking lot with roses in one hand and 200$ worth of Canadian Tire money in the other. It was to my greatest surprise and dearest dismay that this proved not to be the case.
Not only does my personal ad elicit responses from potential lovers who state that their ideal first date would involve running over a deer on the highway and taking it home for dinner," after which rompous time would ensue", but there are locals I KNOW and have SPOKEN to on more than one occasion who respond to my personal ad as if we have never met before. What are they thinking? That I would say, "Who was that masked man?...Only with..out the mask...oh. The only other potential explanation is that my photos are completely inaccurate representations of what I look like in real life, despite being unmolested by photoshop. If this is true, I am logically forced to conclude that I look much worse in person than on picture, which runs into a downward spiral of regret and diminishing self esteem, concluding with me sitting on my fat, pimple-ridden ass in the basement eating soggy gluten-free sponge cake and listening to Sarah McClaughlan; I just don't want to go there.
In any case, I have not only abandoned the web an appropriate place to seach for ones life partner (though Shaadi.com still has my number), I have also abandoned the search; the position has been filled. As it turns out, I had no trouble finding people even here to share the cold nights with, and I am rather embarrassed to admit that I have recently had to break out the other hand when tallying up the notches in me britches; however, during this experimental adventure into 'ho-dome on Operation "F*ck the Hurt Away", it has become mightly apparent that this sort of behaivour is alienating to the soul, and makes it in fact more difficult to piece Humpty Dumpty back together again (whoever said he was an egg?).
When love that was is gone, it is far easier to attempt to deny it's existence in the first place, as is a common habit of mine, because that denial protects the believe in the unwavering and eternal nature of that one feeling that is constant even while we are not. I would prefer to believe that love is a relative constant, but that it is easily subsumed by the negative and uncompromising emotions of the ego, and that desire to obtain an impossible happiness that is ours and ours *alone*. That doesn't change the bleak reality that when we "lose" the love we had for someone, we face the horrifying prospect of never sharing anything meaningful with that person again; never hearing them sing or seeing them naked or reading their minds, and it is this fear that breaks us. It cuts us to the quick.
That being said, adaptablility is mankinds greatest assest, and with the right stiching, and a liberal supply of multivitamins, the heart and soul can and do mend, despite our best efforts to the contrary. And as much as it also sucks to admit this, it doesn't really matter who it is: love is always our gift and even though we may give it away, we are apt to retain the greater part for ourselves as a starter ro grow more to be given away.
You know, like sourdough.
And I can bake some sweet-ass bread
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