Love Hurts

All love hurts.

Even if it is returned and endless there will always be pain involved. As humans we get so emotionally attached to people and, often, no physical pain can surpass emotional pain caused by a loved one.

This kind of shared love is not the theme of this entry however: I am talking about unrequited love.

Do you know what it is like to be in love with someone who does not love you back? Maybe you do. If not, let me tell you that it is the worst thing in the world and yet, at the same time, it is wonderful... just to feel pure, genuine love for someone.

This is my dilemma: I am in love with a guy who will never love me back.

I can't really think when the seeds of my love were planted, if you will, but the defining moment was about a year and half ago... just after the end of my exam leave and my friends and I had just had a summer barbeque in the gardens near my house. After most people had left, he - he will, of course, remain nameless in this blog - had come down to walk his dog. As we all do in those situations, I became completely tongue-tied when he spoke to me - uttering something incomprehensible about his dog and "his" grass - whatever it was, it physically pains me to think of it and I have successfully blocked the memory for the past year and a half.

Anyway, it was probably after that fateful encounter that I really began to fall in love with him and I told my best friend shortly after he left. I never have been one for telling people the object of my desire - it reminds me all too much of school playground games about who you "fancied" - but in this case I needed someone to know.

So that is where it all began and since then I have been living in a hell hole knowing the guy I love is way too good for me and there is no chance he will ever go for me. I think it may have something to do with the fact that I have known him since I was about 7 and so any feelings he had would have been more sisterly than anything else.

It has got to a stage where seeing him is so painful that I don't think I can do it anymore. I ruin any other kind of relationship because I am holding onto the hope that he will suddenly realise his mistake, sweep me up and ride me away on his black horse (white horses are just too cliché). I'm not the kind of girl that cries over things like this - if I cry it's probably about a film or a song rather than anything truly meaningful - but the fact that he has reduced me to tears shows how far this has gone.

However, through all the pain, I know that I am lucky to feel this kind of love for someone. Yes, I know it's not returned but don't pity me. Loving him makes me happy (pathetic as it sounds) and I don't know where I would be if I suddenly lost him. Amongst all the other hectic things in my life, he is a constant and just exchanging pleasantries with him on the street can brighten up my day. I know it sounds completely ridiculous that someone could be content with loving someone who was completely oblivious but I think, if he did know, it would ruin the perfect picture I have created in my mind.

Maybe it is better this way. I mean, for example, if he ever did return my love then he would be able to shatter my life and cause even more pain. He may not turn out as perfect as I have made him out to be in my mind and then where would that leave me? I would have wasted over a year of my life being in love with someone who, as it turned out, wasn't very nice.

I know it is difficult to understand but, despite the pain, I don't know whether I would have it any other way.
The reason for writing this entry though is not to get pity from people about my pathetic love life, it is really to say that love hurts. Love is possibly the most painful thing we humans do and yet it is also the most beautiful thing. However, love is also never ending - once someone has gained that place in your heart they never really leave it. Whether you are in love twenty times in your life or just the once, each person you have loved will always keep a little of your heart aside for themselves.
And yes, I do hope that one day I will find someone who is so much better for me in the future but, at the moment, I am just happy to have loved. For it is always better to have loved and lost (or never had that love returned) than to have never loved at all.