Thursday 31 October 2013

Fear in Love

I once heard someone say that fear is the heart of love. At the time that I heard it I scoffed at the mere thought of it. How can you claim to love a person if you are living in fear was the fickle thought that crossed through my mind. Clearly I knew little and less about love at that point in my life.

Fear is an emotion that not only keeps us alive but also keeps us on our toes. It keeps us at our best behaviour and ensures that we stay in line at all times. It isn’t always the best way to live one’s life when viewed as a method of obedience. So how can such a negative and potentially harmful emotion come to be associated with an emotion such as love?

Well I guess the next logical step would be to define love. The mere thought of tackling such a colossal task sends ripples through my cerebrospinal fluid. Being an amateur, a mere poser of a writer, I could not even pretend to have the eloquence and vocabulary required to explain this one simple word. I can however draw from experience and say that love is not something rushed in to; it is something that grows and matures. I don't believe in the ideology of love at first sight. We may find attraction upon gazing at another but love is something deeper. It develops from a deeper understanding of another person that results in you understanding yourself better. It is beyond just an emotion and becomes an aspect of your life. It either builds you or breaks you and largely depends on the reciprocation of the emotion.

So where does fear fit in? For long I have been deluded by the idea of being in love. I have rushed in, declared undying love and the whole shebang. I never truly understood the concept of the emotion in itself. Yet when I allowed myself to understand the person and see the whole picture I found myself feeling emotions stronger than I was used to. For long I denied the idea that it could be love until I realised that it was not a ‘love’ I was used to. It was different, mature and real and this was when fear set in. It was in this moment that those words echoed through the ventricles of my brain and I realised I feared not only for myself but for everything that made me, me.

I fear not that I would lose the other but rather that I would be so consumed by my emotions that I would not be able to stop loving him should he fade back in to the shadows. I fear the uncertainty of love without claim and worse I feel the weight of an uncertain future so heavy upon my shoulders I fear I might break within. I fear, above all else, that he will spend all the love within me, that he will take everything that I have and leave me broken inside.

I don’t fear loving him for love isn’t something to be afraid of. I fear the consequences of the depth of my emotions. The fear is different. Instead of resulting in me stepping back, re-evaluating and adjusting my behaviour as a result of the fear, I find myself rushing in head long. I cannot for a second think of toeing the line or letting the fear consume me. The only thought that rushes through my mind is that this fear is born out of an emotion so different, so strong and so beautiful that despite it all I will be able to live with the fear. At the heart of this love is a fear almost as beautiful as the love itself. It is a fear of loving too much and too deeply but because the emotion I fear is so awe-inspiring, it is logical to assume that the fear is just as so.

The fear does not define the love but the love does define the fear. If you truly understand the emotion you do not find yourself fearing being alone or abandoned but rather you find your fear is something more real, more meaningful.

A singular quote from one of my favourite novels finds itself coming to mind as this random musing comes to a close.

“At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won’t stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart. And sometimes, my friend, the love I have and can’t give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep”. (Shantaram- Gregory David Roberts)

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