Goathead

Today marks one month without writing anything of substance, and this is my breaking the fast. I’ve thought on more than one occasion what it means to be called a writer, and I’ve come up with a rough sketch. It’s a bit like when an artist begins to draft out the basic geometry and composition of their art: We lack detail, but a resemblance to the final product exists.

My first draft, then: A writer is one who cannot stop writing.

For whatever reason, it’s gotten into my head and my heart that the only appropriate response to emotionally volatile circumstance is to sit down and write. For the past month, I have, on many occasions, felt the urge to sit down and allow myself room to breathe air unclouded by smoke. With my recent move, though, this has proven difficult, and I’ve been extraordinarily lazy. Now that I am settled, hopefully we can explore these thoughts together in a way that is both productive for me and entertaining for you.

Anyway, the topic that left me longing for the keyboard at 2:30am: Loving someone who doesn’t exist.

We all, in one way or another, love someone who does not, has not, and/or will not exist. The form may change from case to case, but the result is often the same — a unique brand of unrequited love. This specific type of unrequited love is similar in function to the everyday, I-love-the-most-popular-girl-in-school type of love in that it leaves the owner, the lover, lost. Inside of us we have a kind of burn that refuses to heal, cannot be salved, and throbs with pain each and every time we nearly forget about it. When one loves another, and that love is not returned, it can result in a romantic nihilism that fractures one’s sense of self-worth, meaning, and emotional wellbeing. What makes our special brand unique is that we can remain disconnected from the reality of our futile love indefinitely. While love for the girl next door may fade with time, or with a realization that she’s a bit rude, or when she gets engaged, there’s little to keep us away from the ghosts of our minds. Men (and I can only speak from a straight man’s perspective) may pine for the image of a particular woman for years with the hope that one day she might open her eyes and see him. To be seen, not even loved, is among the greatest of hopes for the unrequited lover.

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When I was a young teen, maybe thirteen or fourteen, I had a dream about a woman who I had never met. She had long, strawberry blonde hair, glasses, and braces. In a phrase: The type of girl thirteen-year-old me idolized. In this dream, the girl and I played in the snow, had a few meals together, and fell in love. From my perspective, I spent days with this dream girl. I can still smell the pine wood of the cabin we stayed in, and feel her cold, dry hand in mine.

That was nearly a decade ago.

This woman only existed for a moment, and only in my head, and yet I remember her as I sit here now. For weeks afterward (and this may have been symptomatic of other problems that middleschoolers go through) I was lovesick. I knew I could never see her again, but I fell asleep each night yearning for another dream with her. I would spend every chance I could sleeping, just on the off chance I could catch her again. With childish hope that she could possibly be real, I pursued her. The girl from a dream. The shadow of a real person. An object created by my subconscious. It took a toll on my health, my schoolwork, and my social life.

It can be funny to look back on how silly we were as children, but old habits die hard. While I doubt many of us chase literal dream women, how many of us can honestly say we’ve never had a celebrity crush? Or fantasized about an ex from years past? Or imagined a life with the person standing behind us at the grocery store?

These people, and the qualities thereof, are fiction. Celebrities are painted in limelight, our exes change and evolve as normal people do, and the person standing behind us in the grocery store is just trying to get a few eggs for an omelette that could use a bit more salt.

To love these people, as we do, is to deny the reality of the truly great people around us. When we choose fiction over fact, we hurt ourselves and deny others the opportunity to love us. If we are preoccupied with dreams, we can never see them realized.

Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women touches on a similar topic. After a woman’s death, her husband contacts our narrator, an old boyfriend, to inform him of the news. The narrator of this story hadn’t thought of the woman in years, and had moved onto a new life. The man the woman once knew was, in a way, dead, yet we can infer that she carried some amount of love, care, or thought of him to the grave. He was important enough to her, after all, that her husband felt it necessary to call.

Don’t carry love for the dead to the grave. It can only bring hurt, and we need all the love we can muster for the people around us. The people who still exist. Pull the goatheads from the soles of your shoes and toss them by the roadside.