How dare we love the people we like?

What is it about us, as human beings, that makes us seek love? Are we hardwired for it? Is it part of the root command on system's motherboard? Or have we been conned into it by previous generations? Do our parents think to themselves, "Yea, we've had our share of pain and misery, let's make sure or kids are just as fucked up as we are, let's tell them that love is the best thing ever."? Perhaps its too convenient to blame our parents, but I'm not ruling it out. Not yet.

You would think we would learn something from all of music, poems, books, plays and movies that document the pain and the heartache of love lost, thrown away, used, abused, abandoned or misplaced.

But we just keep going back. Moths at least have the decency to die when they get too close to the flame. Not us. Unless we pull some melodramatic Romeo and Juliet shit and off ourselves, or worse, get melodramatic and psychotic and whack each other. Sometimes we go back to the same person in the same circumstances and expect a different outcome. This time it will be different. But, is it ever really different, even with a different person? We may change roles from time to time, but someone is always the ass, someone ends up as the victim, and heartache ensues.

You may be asking yourself, what the fuck is up with The G-man? Did someone shit in his Cheerios today or what? Well, no not exactly. But I did just get done watching the movie "Closer" with Julie Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen. If you haven't seen the movie, I won't spoil the story for you. But it does not necessarily have a typical Hollywood ending. It has a real-life ending, where things are ambigious and unclear and we don't necessarily know where the characters lives go from that point, just like we've each experienced in our own lives.

I was compelled to buy the DVD of this film when I saw some promo piece about it prior to the DVD release. This is the first DVD I've bought in a long time, if ever, for which I had not seen the movie first. I like buying DVDs of films that I like, particularly movies that I find particularly moving. This movie, certainly fits in the category of moving. But I didn't know if I would like it or not before I bought it. I merely had to have it. Well, I also bought Apollo 13 too, so at least the trip to the store wouldn't be a complete bust in the event I had to chuck the "Closer" DVD into the nearest Dumpster. For the record, I won't be pitching it. And maybe I bought it in part because it was one movie of recent vintage that I had not seen with my ex. This movie watching experience would be mine and mine alone.

I don't think I could have watched this movie when it was released in theaters back in December. Although I like to think I was emotionally in pretty good shape back in December, I was probably still unduly under the influence of the breakup of my engagement just six months earlier. And maybe I'm still unduly under the influence of it, I don't know. But I do know that I was able to sit through this entire film, with all its depicted emotion of relationships growing and dying and did not shed a single tear. As unmanly as it may be to admit, last year there were a lot of tears. Little things could bring on big tears. Maybe the tears for this failed relationship are gone for good. In fact, I find myself looking forward to the next relationship.

I may already be in the next one as far as that goes.

I said I wouldn't give the story away on "Closer" and I won't but I don't think it gives too much away to say that one of the themes in the film is about relationships interrupted by other relationships. I could certainly relate to that theme, as this current relationship was interrupted, by me, twice, in order to pursue other relationships. Now, in my defense, this current relationship I speak of has never been consummated, in no small part because we live two time zones apart and have never got our shit together enough to fix that.

So, why do we put ourselves through the turmoil of love relationships? Because there is turmoil. The people best equipped to hurt us are those who profess their love for us and for whom we feel what we label as love. Oh, sure, harsh words from a stranger can cut, but it takes a lover or a family member to do permanent damage. Yet we still risk that pain. Time and time again. We see it in people of all ages, socioeconomic levels, sexual preferences. We seek this thing called love, like it is a drug that we've been hooked on and can't kick. Stopping smoking is less gutwrenching than giving up on love.

Are we all fools? Fools for love?

I think we are. It's fun to be footloose, foolish and falling in love. So fuck it. Let's all hop in. Group swim!

But the irony of it all is that we may only learn the depths of our emotion in that pain of loss, due to betrayal, breakup, separation or death. I don't believe that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it does tell us how much we miss our fix. We don't know we are hooked until we can't have it. So, here I just got one monkey off my back, which back in June and July felt like it had a deathgrip on my spirit. Now, there is only a slight twinge of phantom pain left on the heart. And what I learned was that I'm willing to risk that pain yet again for the boring drudgery of an average ordinary day in love and loved by someone.

Crazy shit Maynard, that's all there is to it, complete with straightjacket and staff shrink. Love is not rational. It's not logical. It is just sheer lunacy.

Where do I sign up?

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