The Perils of Love

Is love a fancy or a feeling? 

Our friend Hartley Coleridge penned a sonnet beginning with this very question. 

At first I asked, why doesn't love listen to warning signs, red flags, bells or whistles?  Is love totally deaf, blind and handicapped? (If so, love is a poor bastard indeed.) Love wants what it wants.   Like a greedy child, it sometimes reaches for innapropriate mates to cure itself from some former injury.

We have all fallen prey to love's selfish, misguided desires.

I've decided love is not an emotion but rather a choice the mind makes. 

Sometimes we choose people that mirror a dysfunctional situation we experienced as children.  In choosing someone similar to a distant father or critical mother we inadvertently re-create a similar scenario....as adults we try to "fix" it.

It doesn't work.  We can't fix the past. 

The day I finally got a job, after almost a year of unemployment, love took off and left me stranded.

Without so much as a word he disappeared. 

Previously, I'd had alot of time for love.  I focused on it, coddled it, cooked for it, sacrificed, forgave and re-adjusted to make room for it.

I turned love into a spoiled child.

Was it love or a masquerade?

Hell if I know.  I only know that love won't abandon you when things are difficult.  It won't run out because you can't pat it on the head every 10 seconds.  Love is a sustainable absolute choice no one can chase away.

Was I in love or duped by a masquerader?  (A masquerader can trick you if you're not paying attention.) I won't trash the man.  I was in love with the masquerader.  What's a girl to do?  I'm thinking...go Paddle Boarding.

This is what paddle boarding looks like. I WON'T be wearing a bikini. 

As for my guy, I have one thing to say:

Disappearing acts are for cowards...and tricks are for kids.

Sonnet VII
By Hartley Coleridge

Is love a fancy, or a feeling? No.
It is immortal as immaculate Truth,
'Tis not a blossom shed as soon as youth,
Drops from the stem of life--for it will grow,
In barren regions, where no waters flow,
Nor rays of promise cheats the pensive gloom.
A darkling fire, faint hovering o'er a tomb,
That but itself and darkness nought doth show,
It is my love's being yet it cannot die
Nor will it change, though all be changed beside;
Though fairest beauty be no longer fair,
Though vows be false, and faith itself deny,
Though sharp enjoyment be a suicide,
And hope a spectre in a ruin bare.