OK - Gals & Guys - hold on to your "G" spots now! We're di-secting "The Love Bug" here - and I don't mean a cute lil ole VW !!!
Love Is Like . . .
Copyright 3/30/02Tom Hyland
An addiction! A bad habit! In short, it sometimes SUCKS!
Can we take a moment to examine these rather rabid statements?First, consider the addiction part, okay? You meet someone, your heart skips a beat, then: eventually, you "get a little" and --- "Wham, bam, thank you Ma'am" - you're HOOKED! You want MORE, MORE, MORE!
Will Shakespeare put it well, in Romeo and Juliet: ". . . parting is such sweet sweet sorrow." Yeah, it's sweet alright! You can't stand being without her (him). No matter how hard you use your mind and will power to avoid this "Love Bug,' once it's in your system, even methadone won't help! You just gotta' have it!
Somehow, I managed to get through sixty years of my life without being a "gambler." I probably never lost more than twenty bucks playing "penny-ante" poker, throughout all those years.
Then my wife left me after thirty-four years of marriage, and I suffered withdrawal for well over a year. I needed a vacation. Get away from it all, right? So I spent a week in Vegas, and lost more money than I ever dreamed of! Now, don't get me wrong. I had fun! I lived "high, wide, and handsome."
Six hundred dollars might be a mere pittance, or "drop in the bucket" to a real gambler, but it's three thousand percent more than that aforementioned twenty bucks! Like love, a bad habit had just begun. I missed that wonderful noise of the "clickety-clacking" of coins being spewed into my hopper.
A case in point, by the time that a year and a half had passed since our separation, the pangs of lost love drove me to seek something else to fill the empty void, whereupon I discovered a local "watering hole" with those little computerized machines which some used to call "one-armed bandits." You know, the ones with the prominent signs claiming "for Amusement Only."
Well, like an innocent lovelorn teenager, I just had to "test the waters." So, over a six week period, I did pretty good --- well, at first!I was a little ahead, then a little behind (nice buns!), then just even!
Then, a month ago, I received the Final Divorce papers! Whoops! Gotcha! Those doggoned machines called to me like the proverbial sirens of Jason and the Argonauts. "Feed me!" "Feed me!" "Feed me!" They whispered their sweet chants. Not unlike the hypnotizing stare of Medusa, they drew me toward the rocks, sat me on a barstool, and turned my feet to stone!
In short, in the space of a mere two nights I lost three hundred and fifty more dollars! Bad habit? Yep, you got it!
Well, what's that got to do with Love? Even though I have dated other women, and even "scored" a couple of times, like the Championship Ravens, it was only Lust, not Love!
I miss her voice, her smile, her tender caress, her warm presence just lying next to me --- and like an addiction, or bad habit, it still hurts!
The conscious mind knows that it is all over --- "irreconcilable differences" was the legal term. But the heart will not accept the loss, the void, the irreparable damage, it wants MORE, MORE, MORE!
Love Is Like . . .Oh, I failed to mention those other machines of addiction. You know, the little grey boxes that transmit X's and O's and 1's through the air, or wires, or cables, or satellites, throughout the known world — The Web, The Internet! These camouflaged sirens are even more deadly and perverse than the former ones.
At one time, I had posted six different profiles on six different web-sites, advertising my masculinity, seeking LOVE! Hours upon hours, upon hours have been spent — wasted — searching for that new "Soul Mate." Gee, Mommy, another love addiction! Time squandered away: looking at pictures, reading profiles, agonizing over details, searching for a MATCH --- drooling, exchanging emails, then phone calls. Results?
Sure, I had about a dozen face-to-face encounters, real live dates! But, guess what? Ten out of twelve of these "ladies" who demanded honesty somehow used the subterfuge of posting OLD pictures! In reality, they actually looked like the "grandmothers" of those beautiful sweet THANGS on the "puter" screen!Did I mention that Love SUCKS?
My "Ex" and I had a very calm, nice, civil, amicable separation --- no more arguments, disagreements, misunderstandings and very rare contact, if any! So, I have sent her very nice greeting cards, some with animation and beautiful music, as well as emails for various holidays and birthdays --- all the while, secretly hoping for just a glimmer of a spark of an old romance. All for naught! I got short, cryptic responses back, like: "Thanks." or, "I already saw that one." or, "I really don't have space on my computer at work."So, my friends, the addiction, the bad habit --- LOVE --- continues!
Someone much wiser than I once said, "Man does not live by bread alone!" He was most certainly correct! Without love, nothing else matters! So, what have we learned? Get back on our bikes (or little tricycles, like the Dirty Old Man on Laugh-In) and just keep peddling along until that wonderful little life-sucking Love Bug bites us --- again --- and again --- and yet again --- ad infinitum!
Sure, it SUCKS! But what's a fella to do? "The game is afoot!" as Sherlock Holmes might say!
P.S.: Look for the sequel, "Alas, Woe Is Me!" which was somehow mysteriously written twenty-eight days earlier than this! So, how on earth could it be a sequel? Just look how they screwed up the order of the Star Wars chronologies! Huh?
Book 2 of the romance trilogy Horses of Tir Na Nog
Life for CJ, and Shawn, has taken on new meaning and a wonderful turn. Never in a million years did CJ think she could be this happy. With her new husband and closest friends in tow, she’s bound
