Love Hurts: Discussing Controversial and Unrealistic Love In This Modern Day Era

LOVE? What does love mean to you? Yes, we love our families and our friends. That type of love is restricted and uncomplicated. However, there is the other type of complicated love. The kind of love that is unrestricted, or I should say; it should be unopposed, in my opinion. How about the kind of love we feel for another person one on one? Whether it be a man and a woman in love, or same sex, or different races, even long distance love; how do you feel about those types of love?

Obviously, a man and woman relationship is the one that is well perceived in the world as normal, and I know there are a lot of people who think this is the only type of conventional love. The only type that is acceptable. However, how is this determined if say, a man falls for another man, or a black man falls in love with a white woman, or what seems to be happening now with all the booming social sites like Facebook and Skype is different cultures are meeting and falling in love online?

This seems to be a topic of conversation now in this online world we live in. The normal way of living our lives has gotten a bit more complicated in this high-tech society. Before we had the Internet, we lived as people that really stayed in our own little boxes, didn’t we? Go to school or work, make friends there, maybe find love there, and if not there, go out to a social function, or a club, and meet someone you may be compatible with, get married and have a family, and do normal things such as this. If you happened to be in a gay relationship, it wasn’t broadcast as much, if you were dating out of your race, people of your community were the ones that had to deal with it, and long distance relationships consisted of if your spouse worked out of town most of the year, and that was the extent of it.

With the Internet came options and opinions on everything. We became involved in everyone’s life. Well, at least our friends on Facebook, right? We know when Sally is lonely, we know when Mike fell in love with Mike, and we have reached overseas to acquaint ourselves with different cultures, and it seems the pleasure in that, the pure curiosity in getting to know someone from an unlike culture, has fascinated a lot to fall in love that way. I, myself, am guilty of the latter. I have fallen for a man of a different culture through our online connection. However, trust me when I tell you, it can be the most loving relationship you ever have, then turn into something very different.

There are a lot of issues in relationships of this era. Not that gay relationships or different race relationships have ever been easy to have in an opinionated world, but you no longer deal with just the naysayers of your community you live in now. You deal with all the opinions of the busy bodies that feel they have the right to express their opinions on everything you post online. And I mean, freedom of speech does exist, but if you are not bragging about your love life and you simply just felt like posting a loving photo for friends to see online, it shouldn’t render conversation anymore, except to say; nice photo friend.

I have found, at times, that I get so frustrated with being on social media because of these types of extreme antagonists, that I often contemplate if I would just rather shut my whole social world down. And believe me, I’m not the type to put my private business out there. The most I post is I’m sick today, or I may say I’m having a bad day without going into detail about that. Yeah, I do try to save my internal stuff for my poetry, and my poetry friends, who I know, will just get it. We are a special breed after all. :) Even so, It is always amazing to me that even the lack of information, still can bring up controversial opinions.

So, maybe my initial question at the start of this conversation should have been asked in a different way. I should have probably asked it in this way; how do you feel about love in these days of no privacy? Because in spite of when we attempt to stay personal, it doesn’t always work. You don’t even have to be on social media. You could have a personal conversation with a friend at work about your love life and next thing you know; you are the topic of discussion on the social sites. We’ve become our own type of celebrity haven’t we?

I started off just wanting to write a simple poem and prose, touching on that common topic for us poetry writers; LOVE. However, I always like to write a little to explain my train of thought, so people who read my poetry can maybe get a better understanding of my way of thinking. When I start to do this, I like to read my poem again to myself, so I have just the right words to explain. What I realized as I read my poem back, was that, as I meant it to be a part of my personal love situation, it actually could be a situation for all different types of lovers. It could, in fact, resonate with how same-sex couples may feel, or couples of unlike race and culture, and also, like my own story of love, a love that can simply not be for reasons beyond a solution. With that said, I hope you enjoy my poem, and I hope you agree with my purpose. God Speed.

I feel like I miss

you today. As the

clouds roll over

the sky outside

turning it to be gray.

My heart is compelled

to feel the same way;

gray as gray, and dark

as the day.

Although, I know we

had to separate, pull

apart our chests. It

was for the best.

The immense love

in my heart some

days could not compete

with the killing pain

of being without you

week after week...

too many things not

to go our way, guiding

us now to live these

days in our own space.

I can only imagine now

how your days are going,

and sometimes my longing

for you smothers my ability

to move forward.

Even so, I know our love wasn’t

meant to be, at least in these

days of uncertainty.

It arrayed too many sins,

too many unconventional

dreams. We weaved them

until it became painfully

painful to see.

Our love was magic with

an air of brilliance, but it

made no sense in our

current residence.

Maybe one day the

universe will bend, and

make a perfect plan for

us to begin again.