Unemployed

Loving someone is an invincible feeling. Interesting, given the volatility of love. But for what it is and the purpose it provides, it accomplishes almost everything you'd want to, and it does it all at once. If you're me, travel with someone you love, and the "almost" fades away.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't loved anybody yet. Not because it's passed, but because the contrast between life in love and life without spans a length broad enough to sadden me. I suppose it's the lack of anything that pulls us to reclaim what's lacking, but a pull you have no control over begins to feel like a drag through the mud.

No one likes to perform as a shade of what they could be. Most commonly, that's coined as "selling yourself short," if you believe doing so is possible. That's why sudden unemployment is such a source of grief and depression for those struggling with it. Productivity and purpose as they knew it formerly disappear without saying goodbye. I consider living life between loves as living life between jobs. The latter is but a shadow in comparison, but when I think of performing as a shade of what I could be, I think of what I'm doing at any point that I'm not composing phrases of devotion in my head and conjuring ways to make one person smile. In fact, I do it anyway. But the person isn't real.

I don't think I so highly regarded knowing someone as well as they'll allow me--and even better than that--before I'd been in love. It's become my goal in any relationship I have. So much so that if I recognize the person in question has either given that part of them to someone else, or doesn't care for me to have it, I don't care much to have them. I think it's important that I've recognized this, because it's not terribly healthy. It doesn't render me a very good friend. Yet I can't shake the desire for the greatest opportunity of knowledge of any one person. I don't believe this is an original or even rare desire; it's a pride any soul well-versed in companionship would take. But it seems I prefer loneliness to anything less than the gold. Perhaps understandable, considering how precious the gold.

But isn't silver nice, too?

The answer is a dialogue between my head and my heart, and I'm not sure which says which.

"Yes."

"But you can have it."