love and break ups

I recently read an article about what being in love feels like. It was a psychoanalytic piece. I've heard a lot about butterflies and blissed out happiness. I've never had that in my whole life. I've had anxiety, and a fair bit of grief. Never the head swim of joy I’ve heard about. I know what attachment has felt like and I know how bad break ups feel, so the attachment must have been sufficient to engender that level of misery. It was a feeling that was nothing like love as described there-rose tinted.

The break up has felt strangely physical. It was located to my chest. Felt tight, and was associated with a sort of emptiness. It's bad enough that feel like I don't think I really want to be with anybody again, which is a sort of Defeat. The article said that it's different for everybody (the feeling of being in love), which makes sense, since we are all individuals whose experiences form a unique complexity of wiring in our minds. It also said that love is just transference. And the happiness thing some people generally seem to get is an endorphin rush. It's a chemical reaction-it's science.

It sounded so simple. So why is it hard for people like me to not be perpetually single? My experiences have been attachment avoidance by choosing people I hoped to be able to want over time, through friendship, but didn't really want; or otherwise, attempts to experience love but with people who I knew were unlikely to reciprocate, and sure enough, didn't.

Oscar Wilde said, the essece of love is unertainty-you never really know how the other feels about you. I have been aware of the fact that, although I was told I was loved, that I've not been loved and have become attached in an unhappy sort of way. I think this awareness has fuelled the anxiety that I will never find what I need, and the disappointment I read as heartbreak. My heartbreak, then, is a physical feeling absence of love-not a reaction to the loss of it. I'm trying to not discuss the mulchy version of heartbreak-it's tedious. I think that if somebody is cruel to you, they don't actually care how you feel and that's not love.

I accept I've never had it. That means, you can be kind, and pretty and smart, or handsome and brave-whatever you like. Perfectly eligible, and because of whatever dodgy wiring you have from your crappy upbringing or whatever else or sheer bad luck (if there is such a thing-maybe we create our experiences. Who knows. Regardless), you can go through the better part of your life, or all of it, choosing badly and never being loved.

I realised today, I completely forgot about and missed an opportunity for a brilliant editing job, because I'd been so consumed with this garbage about this man who didn't even care about me-something that was getting me nowhere in my life. My focus had drifted so far from what my priority should have been-sorting my own sh*t out. I keep hearing about self-love being the foundation to receiving love. And that’s about working on yourself. Since we have limited time alive, maybe we're better off on our own and out of harm's way than with somebody who gives us cause for doubt and worry, but who we hope will turn good in the end.