THE KARMA OF UNREQUITED LOVE

Movie poster of the most recent Hollywood version of Tolstoy's ode to unrequited love starring Keira Knightley as the tragic heroine

Love hurts.  People will say that it's not love that hurts, but it's all the emotions, choices, and decisions we make for love that creates the painful chaos.  Well, this commentary is not about defining what love is or what love can do to people.  It's about karma and more specifically my personal ever-changing cycles of unrequited love karma.  

In a nutshell, I have discovered that I am caught in an endless loop where in one phase, I am in love with someone who isn't in love with me, and then in another, I am not in love with someone who is actually in love with me.  I have revisited these phases ever since I was a teenager obsessing over and chasing after long-haired redheads.  

My first introduction to unrequited love started in Grade 6 when one of my classmates took an interest in me and went so far as to give me a hallmark card to notify me that his heart was smitten.  I remember that day like the back of my hand.  We were in the classroom just after recess.  He approached me and handed me the card with a sheepish grin on his face. He was a cute little guy, but I won't mention his name here out of respect for his privacy.  I took the card and opened it to find a short hand-written poem that used some words from the hallmark song.  I felt an overwhelming fear combined with that 'eww, gross' feeling.  I then proceeded to rip the card in shreds as the poor bloke watched in shock, along with some other nosy classmates guffawing behind him.  I threw the nearly evaporated card back in his face and told him never to humiliate me that way ever again.  He was visibly hurt.  I didn't care.  

So that was probably my first meeting with unrequited love (UL) and probably when the karmic cycle was triggered.  Because I had rejected someone in such a despicable insensitive manner, I'd get a taste of that myself.  Karma is not really a form of punishment, but a learning cycle.  All I can say is that I'm still learning and therefore, the cycle continues.  

What followed after my initial ill treatment towards another human being was a long and often lingering line-up of rejections, broken hearts, obsessive poetry, stalker-like behaviour, and so forth.  I was the one who kept experiencing the rejection over and over again.  Thankfully, the tables would turn every now and then and I would be at the receiving end of some poor lovelorn soul's undying love, devotion, dedication, and possibly self-destruction, his, not mine.  

I know the intensity of that rejection well.  My friends do too because they were witness to the number of times I went on the hunt for the men who I felt were born to be mine.  I wrote devotional poetry better than Rumi because I thought it would convince these lotuses of my eyes that I was a true winner and that my quirky, eccentric exterior was really a protective shield to cover the divine goddess within.  

None of them fell for it of course.  I was left with an acidic taste in my mouth and a heart pierced with splinters of glass, stones, cigarette butts, whatever was lying on the ground as it got dragged through the muddy trenches of Pat Benatar's  song "Love is a Battlefield".   My mind was a raging battlefield as the heavy artillery of possessiveness took hold.  I wouldn't settle for anything less than victory.  But the harder I fought, the more I lost: dignity, self-respect, money, time, friendships, and a lot of other things important to my health and well-being.  

But that was then, and this is now.  And now, now I'm once again at the receiving end.  This time, I'm exploring carefully what lessons need to be learned here so I don't end up hurting the other person involved in this faulty equation.  I'm steering clear of giving any signs of hope that the relationship might solidify into a more permanent romantic partnership but at the same time trying to infuse my responses with the knowledge that I too was once in that place.  But it doesn't make the sting of rejection any less painful for anyone on the other side.  Alas!  This is life!  

So I feel for the Anna Karenina's of this world.  I know how hard it is to cope with UL and find the courage to let go of all the effort we put in to win our heart's desire, to let go of the dream of being with that person for the rest of our lives, to let go of caring for and supporting that person through their challenges, and to let go of our own need for validation from this person.  Many of our reasons for chasing after folks who don't love us are linked in some way to early childhood experiences of being rejected or having to prove that we are good enough to be loved.   Many of our childhood experiences taught us to always give ourselves wholeheartedly to that other person like they're our saviour and we, their servants, and sometimes that behaviour also shows up in many of our other non-romantic relationships with friends, peers, and the public.  We fear that we will lose "love" if we don't serve, but we don't realize that the "love" was never there in the first place.  Some of us never realize that and hope and pray for the rest of our lives that the object of our affection will someday come back to take their rightful place beside us.  And so we continue to toil in vain.  

I for one have stopped toiling and have accepted all of the experiences I've had with UL.  The good that came out of it was that I learned to write lovely poetry  and a couple of nice songs, learned to sing a bit, and I reconnected with my passion to learn piano.  Most importantly, it really created many opportunities for me to explore and learn about compassion, rehabilitation, healing, and gave me an acute awareness of just what it takes to give people caring and loving support.  I'm not perfect though.  This is my journey through the UL karmic cycle.  

For all the folks struggling with unrequited love, there's always hope because there are billions of people in this world and no shortage of paths we could follow and create ourselves.  We were made for so many people and so many people come into our lives so that we may learn from our interactions with them, good or bad.  It does get deeply bad at times and you might feel totally alone in that space with no one to talk to or no one to understand what you might be going through.  If you're contemplating suicide because of being rejected by someone your heart desired, please get help immediately.  This website might help: suicide hotlines

There is also a yahoo group specifically for those who are struggling with unrequited love: Unrequited Love

A friend of mine once said, "follow your bliss".  Yes, do follow your bliss, blindly or with eyes wide open, but also be open to the lessons you might have to learn on this journey of love's pain and glory.  

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