Consumed By Love and Lost Without It

“Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead.”

~Adele, Someone Like You

Love, by emotion, is the most powerful thing on the planet. It brings us joys unheralded, but pain so unrivalled death seems easier. To those hurt by love, nothing can touch the pain in the immediacy of the loss.

Love consumes us. It requires all we have, and sometimes more, and it pushes our existence through to thoughts for extinction. For love to wield such power seems unfair when we are betwixt for the rationale to continue.

But love, also, sees us through. It compels us to hold on for the next time; even in the grips of grief we have an unconscious hope that our fortunes will turn, eventually.

The Commonality And Depths Of Loss From Love

Love and loss are two unlikely companions. They cavort together, taking us through the range of experience—the majestic highs with the calamitous lows. And perhaps both extremes of experience are comparatively rare, yet they always promise and threaten. The majestic highs promise. The calamitous lows threaten.

The depths of loss from love are common to our humanity, which must love to survive. Romantic aspirations are both the making and breaking of us. We love because we cannot help it. We risk because we must love. Anything less is untenable, and yes, possibly even unacceptable.

For all we stand to gain from love we inevitably stand to lose just as much. Yet, the promise compels us to risk what threatens us. Love is a holy dichotomy. It is a contemptible yet alluring mystery.

How are we to deal with the losses that engage us when love is lost?

When Love Is Lost

Sometimes love lasts and sometimes it hurts; ultimately, we have to be prepared for love to end. We may be forgiven for thinking love may remain as it is—interminably. And then there is love that’s lost and never again reclaimed. We may remain hopeful, and all the better for us if we can.

When love is lost we can expect the pain to etch deeply into our inner core. The process of grief is fully engaged. Our drive is quenched. We experience death, not of our mortal bodies, but of our souls. As we live and breathe, death is what subsumes us.

But when love is lost we stand at the cusp of learning. We never want to learn this way. But learn we will if we remain remotely open. A broader, wider, deeper version of us is developed through the suffering.

***

Nothing hurts so much as love lost. Over the jealous expense of grief we are scarred for a time. Love has consumed us and we are lost without it. But we remain hopeful that love will come again, and that hope compels us to survive, to learn, and to adapt to the new situation.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.