Arguably, the type of love that hurts the most is the love that is not returned. I’ve always thought the preteen and early teen years were the most frequent times for this depressing type of love to occur. Those times when we go to the movies, and there on the screen, in all their majesty, is the love of our lives that we know we would be the perfect match for...if they only knew that we existed. Our lives become one of never-ending internet searches, pictures plastered on our bedroom walls, and endless scouring of magazines and other media to find their beautiful face and learn absolutely everything about them. We fall in love even more with every new tidbit we learn about them, and are utterly convinced that they are our star-crossed soulmate that we would only need to meet once before they in turn, fall head over heels in love with us. Our one piece of fanmail to them is the one correspondence that we know will stand out from the pack of every other well-meaning fan, but somehow they will know that the letter we wrote will be the only one to truly pierce their heart and they will make every effort to come find us and declare their undying love. What fantasies we live in. And what a heartbreak it is to us when we find out they’re happily joined together with someone who actually lives in their world and knows them as a person, not just the romanticized version of them that we’ve built up from magazine articles and internet news. We tell ourselves that we’re happy that they’re happy, but inside, our heart is crumbling and all we can think about their significant other is “bitch.”
What about when this kind of love hits closer to home when we actually know the person instead of them being a celebrity living in their faraway castle in the clouds? Does it make it worse when we can actually talk to them and spend a little time in their company? Is it worse when they can actually tell us “no” instead of living in the fantasy of “it could happen if they only met me.”? I remember being around nice guys during my formative school-age years where I thought for sure, “I found the one.” I may have only interacted with them a handful of times, but I knew that these guys just had to be as lovestruck with me as I was with them. We would have a beautiful friendship that would bloom into a beautiful relationship and culminate into a beautiful marriage, until death do us part. What a heartbreak to realize that I was then thought of as the sweet younger sister they wished they could have, and telling me about the girl that they actually were interested in. That was always the absolute nail in the coffin for my playground fantasies.
We all know people that have been put into the friend zone by those that they thought they would have a future with, or maybe that has been applied to our own selves. I think everyone has had at least one experience of knowing unrequited love, and feeling the pain that comes with the realization. We always root for the underdog in the story to win the girl/guy that engulfs their entire mind and heart, but in real life, would their love story work out? In stories, maybe everything actually does meld together nicely and all it took was a moment of realization for the object of their desires to finally realize that they feel the same for our lovelorn hero. How often does that actually happen to someone you know though? Perhaps it did, and you get to celebrate with your friend or yourself, but then come to realize that this ethereal being is in fact human, and that the compatibility of perfection that was imagined, comes sharply to an end? We wouldn’t even have the luxury of mentioning what could have been anymore since an attempt was actually made to connect. Are we then left with nothing but a tarnished ideal in our heads now? Even if things ended amicably and a friendship was maintained, it can be hard to look at that person again and know that you both once shared something that isn’t there any more. The type of love that initially was there turned into a different type of love; one of friendship, and oftentimes, that can be the more stable form of love. You may not even necessarily know that you needed that kind of love until you experience it and found that this was better.
Love is complicated in all of it’s forms, and being human, we don’t always know what we want or need until we’re pushed into it, whether by our own choices or not. Unrequited love always feels like this is the end of us ever feeling this type of passion and that we can never get over it. For some this may be true, but we should open ourselves to the possibility that there is still someone out there for us, or we’ll remain stagnant. The world never stops moving, and neither should we, even though that can be easier said than done with these instances.
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