Rutger Hauer, Foreigner and all the girls I’ve loved before

No real insight here, just something that I’ve thought for a while that got shook lose earlier in the week. Someone asked me was I still in love with someone. I answered in the affirmative but thinking about it afterwards I think they misunderstood my answer or at least interpreted it in a way I didnt intend. I suppose its semantics or possibly just me being contrary. But I think theres an important difference between the question “Are you love with X?” and “Are you still in love with X?” The first question is explicitly asking how you feel about someone at the present and in the present. The latter question however is less clear. I think most people, fairly enough I suppose, interpret the answers as being the same. Actually I’m going to change my mind a little here. I think the answers are the same, its just the latter question gives me a little wiggle room to be a cunt. I shouldnt have answered yes, I should have said “It’s complicated” and explained myself. Which is what I’m doing now. This is probably going to be a deliciously adolescent mixture of wanky and whiny. You have been warned.

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So to start with the specifics, someone asked me was I still in love with an old girlfriend. I answered in the affirmative. But that was a lie, or at least not the whole truth. I’ve no idea what the woman is doing now, I don’t know what she’s like, what she’s into, nothing beyond what some casual internet stalking can glean. When I said I was still in love with her what I actually meant was that I was still in love with her as she’d been when I first loved her. I still love that woman. Who she is now? No fucking clue. She’s a stranger now. I’m not still in love, I’m in love with a moment in time. And as Roy Batty told us, those moments are lost in time, like tears in rain. I don’t want to sound overly melodramatic here. But I’ve never had a successful relationship with the opposite sex (and arguably with members of the same sex as well). I’ve had, what, three? four? “proper” adult relationships. None of then went well and certainly none of them ended well (highlights – dumped for my friend, dumped for her boyfriend because she was pregnant, dumped and then she banged my friend, there were other less dramatic endings (and failed beginnings), I suppose being duped by two acquaintances who pretended to be a girl online deserves a mention as well?). But all those girls and women? I still love (some of) them, but as they were then. I have kept in contact with none of them (actually it’s passingly depressing to think that I dont have any even semi-close female friends, which wasnt an issue in the past, I think?).

No, thats not true. (Brain is literally cringing as I write this) I don’t really know what love is (fucking Foreigner is now stuck in my head), I’ve certainly considered myself to be “in love” before. But in retrospect I’m not so sure. It’s hard to tell really, I’d the usual “crushes” on girls in primary school and the hormone filled obsessions during early adolescence. I don’t think I’d a solid enough grasp on who I actually was to really love someone else. To be honest I can barely remember most of those girls. Towards the end of secondary school it was a little different, though “comedic” would be the best word to describe how my relationships ended during that time period. College, the first time around, had its ups and downs. Actually those four or five years basically killed my interest in relationships. The women from the decade or so stretching from late secondary school to the end of my first go at college are the ones that stick around (mentally speaking obviously). But as I said above, only as they were then, maybe I’d be attracted to them as they are now. But I’ve no real interest in finding out. Looking at myself I’m an entirely different person then I was fifteen years ago and I can only imagine they are as well. So I dont find it odd that I’ve got no interest in strangers.

So after that I worked for a bit before returning to college. I spent a lot of time thinking and talking about relationships during the first three years after going back to college. Looking back I can only describe my behaviour as embarassing, I tried to force it (and its not there, love gives you comfort but comfort makes you dim – all about dem quotes son). Lets say that foolishness wrapped up around 2003, so thats a decade. A decade where I largely havent missed not being in a relationship. During that time there have been a few occasions when I’ve been physically attracted to various women, though that too has largely passed. But never emotionally or mentally attracted to anyone. Sooooo this has gone rather far afield. All I really wanted to point out was that all relationships are just little fragments of time that fade away or get polished to an odd radiance as we mentally turn them over again and again, examining every facet for odd mirror reflections of what might have been.

Haha, that sentence was a splendid little bit of self indulgence, which is really what this entire post also is. There’s no shining moments of truth, no gleaming revelatory epiphanies or insights. There’s just ordinary life moving inexorably onwards. We’re all just as special as the next person (and I mean that in a decidely glass half empty way).