love and loneliness

When someone says they’re in love, everyone assumes that they must be utterly happy and fortunate. It’s a general assumption, even I would assume the same. But what they don’t see is the struggle, the extra efforts, the selflessness, the hurt, the pain, and the loneliness. Loneliness isn’t just a feeling, it’s an emotion, an immensely deep one. It shatters the person from within. There’s nothing worse for a person to feel alone and unworthy. After all, human beings survive and thrive on different relationships. Love and loneliness are intertwined; one eventually leads to the other. It happens with everyone, at some stage of their relationship at least. Vulnerability is the key factor here. Every person becomes vulnerable and puts their guard down when they’re in love. They tend to go the extra mile to make things work. You literally fall in love, so it is bound to hurt some time at least.

Love is like an addiction, once you have it, you don’t want to let it go, and you do everything possible to keep it with you. Even if it means losing your self-respect or yourself too, that’s when you’re truly alone, because you invest so much of yourself that you don’t pay attention to others. You distance yourself from everyone just for that one special person. You don’t understand your own thoughts, and everything seems chaotic. Just a giant web of feelings. But what happens when that person hurts you? What happens when that person distances themselves from you for certain reasons? Then whom do you turn to for comfort? It’s just you and thoughts. There’s no one else there. There’s no love there then. That’s when loneliness sweeps in and takes over. Is it all worth it? You question yourself; you question love, you hate love. You promise yourself to stay away from love. Loneliness grabs your arm and wraps you around in a cocoon of emotions. Mind is playing its games while feelings are fighting to stay inside, just waiting to be released someday. The hard exterior to show to the world, while soft and brittle on the inside. Given up on love for good. But does it really happen? The answer is no. You miss the attention, the affection and the feeling of having someone to rely on. Vulnerability sneaks in again. You decide to give love another chance, ‘it might work out this time’, you say to yourself. And the cycle repeats itself. This is just how we function, love, hate, and love again. Irrespective of the rollercoaster of emotions we go through. This makes us stronger (most of the time) with every passing cycle. Maybe not every time, but this is life. We learn a lot from falling in love, and even more when we’re lonely, because that’s when we’re the only ones to tend to ourselves. Life is tough, undeniably tough, but we are tougher.