you go your way, I go mine, but I'll see you next time

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
(Sonnet CXVI, Shakespeare)

Pretty words, aren't they? Pretty sentiments. They sound true, they sound like always and forever and until the end of time. Purity of emotion; it feels like this.

But what do they really mean. in our real lives? How do these pretty words help?

I've been asked more than once why my ex-loves are still on my roster of friends. If there's no hope, if there's no going back, why can't I walk away? Why do I still interact with them?

Well, part of it is simple courtesy, politeness, civil behavior. Unless we parted with great acrimony--and even my tragedies did not deal me the death of all love--I don't see strong reason to be uncivil, impolite.

But more...I've mentioned here before, it's very difficult for me to unlove. Once I give my heart, I have great problems taking it back. Even once it's returned to me, some small part of me, for more time than is usually good for me...is still there, still resonates to the call of their name across the square, still rings with the echo of their presence.

Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic in this sense. Love doesn't die for me. It withers slowly through inattention, it atrophies, it staggers through attrition and denial. But that facile turning away from the once-loved, the shrugging off of affection I see so many around me perform with such ease...I can't do it. I don't know why. It's just not in me.

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

But it is. It is shaken, it is storm-tossed in the winds. Love turns to pain, love turns to grieving, love turns to that slow ache, that little thorn-prick, low on the threshhold of consciousness, that makes us turn, makes us reflect, on love lost, love gained, love released.

Mayhap, I would be happier if I fell in love easily, fell out of it as easily, lighthearted about every affair of my heart. But love goes deep with me, each love changes me, each love marks me.

And the marks take a very long time, indeed, to fade. If they ever do.

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

It's not false, what the Bard says. But it's not always absolute truth. Love can die if killed. Love can leave if there's no hope. Love can wither, unattended, and love can drown, stranded far from any shore.

It's truth, as far as it goes. It just doesn't apply to every situation. Because love is more complicated than those pretty words, lived day to day in a life. Love is the many-splintered thing, and it will always have thorns on all the roses.

At least mine does. Maybe everyone else...is different.

In other news...I may have set a new record on the grid for fastest job gained and lost. The two designers have parted, and the one that's a personal friend wants me to come with her. We'll see how it goes...