A Love Called Man

One love, and I became a man possessed. Having had a taste of it, I searched for it in everything I saw. No, no, it wasn't about sex, it was love, the ideal, the sublime. It was the apex of all feeling, the summit of all existence. In it I moved and had my being.

But no, I was still far from being its personification. Very far. I was in love...once, and love was what I wanted to be, long ago, it never left me. But when it came to me, I was lost. It became an obsession. No, it's not supposed to be that way. Love is a giving, complete giving. How can you be love when you want something, or someone for yourself. For love is a sharing. Obsession is a prison, both for the 'obsessor' and for the one obsessed.

Vainly I sought for it in every encounter. And the more they came the more disappointed I became. There was no meaning in those meetings underneath the sheets or elsewhere. The momentary touches (for that was all they were) gave very little pleasure, if any. You rise a tiny bit above yourself, you reach out, but find nothing you can truly hold on, that can give a semblance of permanence or a union more sublime, a merging of the spirits in complete giving to one another. Ah, to feel an embrace that fuses more than the bodies, but more of the selves, and then again it is a coming together in a forgetting of the selves such that you are no longer aware of who you are nor of the other and that somehow you meld into the eternal now, not knowing nor caring where one began nor where they ended.

Yes, I became obsessed by that ideal. I sought to lose myself into someone, but couldn't find her, tried to lose my self in love but could not find completion, fulfillment. I had to journey out of that obsession.

A Man in Love

I did fall in love. And how! I was like a man possessed. Every waking hour I thought of noone else but her, and even in my dreams, she barely escaped me. It was not unlike the first time I was attracted to this girl in my childhood years. It was my neighbor. Suzie, it was. I remember distinctly when we played in their yard next door, how I thrilled to hold her hand and heard music when she laughed. It was magical, too, but somehow something was missing. Things were nothing more than moments. And even though the moments lingered long after her presence had faded, they held no meaning for me. When I came home from a vacation one day and found they had already moved - without a word of goodbye - I was deeply saddened, and for days and weeks kept repeating the song "You Don't Know Me" that first became popular during those days. No, there was no pain at all.
Ah, that pain called love, but such sweet pain! For when love is true, its seems you can endure all pain for whom you love and still find joy in all of it. Every moment of absence is torture and every moment of presence equally tormenting when uncertainty still prevailed. And yet, you keep coming back for more because you cannot bear to have it any other way. Such it was with Monique. Time existed only for her, and everything I did during this time I did for love of her. In her I reached for excellence for only then could I see myself as worthy of her.
And then, a friend - I thought he was a friend - entered the picture. Janus, he was; a man of the world, he was, I knew. And when I introduced him to her, he endeavored to make her his own, too, not contented with all the women he already had. I was devastated. It seemed to me I had defiled her, violated her sanctity. And then mine. I could not face her anymore. And when Monique chided me about it, I could no longer continue seeing her. My world crumbled down. Everything turned gray. My world came to a standstill.
Nothing around me mattered anymore. Sure, I still moved and had a world about me and life went on, but something had changed within me. The love that had possessed my heart and soul took over my whole being. While the memory of Monique still remained, the love had taken on a new, different meaning for me, an ideal that consumed me to the very core. I longed for that pain in a somewhat masochistic sort, but more than the pain, it was the longing for the joy that came with it.
I had become a love called Man.