My friend once described me in a lengthy post which ended with this line: “Greatest weakness and strength – Love.”
Oh boy. Is it ever.
One of the most painful moments of my life was when I first got my heart broken as a teen. He was my first love. I was so crazily, unhealthily in love with him that when he broke up with me, he broke me. I cried myself to sleep and woke up with tears still streaming down my face; I didn’t know that was even possible. It hurt so badly that I couldn’t eat anything for days. When I finally forced myself to ingest something, I could only take an apple – and an apple a day was all I had. I lost so much weight (2 inches off my waist in a week) that people started stopping me in hallways to say things like “You’re so thin!” “Drink milk.” “You looked better a week ago.” “Do you eat?” “You’ve been under a lot of stress, I can tell.”
Pathetic. Is that any way for a supposedly smart girl to act? Nope. If I had used my head, I wouldn’t have gone through all that, especially for a boy who wasn’t even that great a catch to begin with. But unfortunately, head doesn’t always win. Heart puts up quite a fight most of the time.
Now I know love is a many splendored thing and makes the world go round and all that. I like seeing people in love, as long as it is a healthy kind of love, the kind of love that makes people happier and be better persons. I am all for that.
There is the other side of the spectrum, however, the kind of love that make me cringe: The battered wife who can’t bear to leave her abusive husband. The woman who carries on an illicit affair with a married man even though everyone knows he is never going to leave his wife for her. The man who stops hanging out with his friends because of his extremely possessive and overly jealous girlfriend. The man who buys a ton of expensive gifts for a woman who is obviously just using him for his money. The woman who used to be Miss Independent until oooh, she fell in love. Then she suddenly can’t function without this guy who wasn’t even her life for the first 20+ years of her existence when she did just fine.
When you’re objective, would you put yourself through any of those kinds of relationships? Of course not! But when you’ve fallen hard for someone, you suddenly find yourself losing your head, losing control, being undone, and being the person you swore you would never become. All because of a little thing called love.
Greatest strength. Worst weakness.
My final proof comes from my favorite TV series, BBC’s Sherlock. In the episode “A Scandal in Belgravia,” a cunning woman named Irene Adler engages in a power play with the government, blackmailing them with secrets which she keeps stored in a locked camera phone, whose password not even the great detective Sherlock Holmes could crack.
Irene and Sherlock |
Pulse – elevated |
Pupils – dilated |
Clever, isn’t it?
Thank you, Sherlock, for the final proof.
P.S. You can watch that scene I described below. It’s so much better to watch than read about, because of the acting and the music. 🙂
—;<@
This post is part of the A to Z Challenge, a blog hop that goes through the alphabet for all the days of April except Sundays. I have decided to go with the theme of Alliterations.