It is a truth universally acknowledged that not everyone or everything you love will love you, no matter how much you want it to be so. Or how much it seems it should be so. Or how little sense it makes for it not to be so.
From the age of 14 to about yesterday, I pined most piteously for a young man without the slightest idea he could differentiate me from a fig tree. If you'd asked me then, I'd have sworn I wanted him to love me. If you asked me a second time just to be sure, I'd as quickly have admitted I was terrified to even speak to him.
I've always been uncomfortable with the phrase 'the love was returned.' I know what it means, but it sounds like the opposite. It sounds like when someone gives you back a book or a dish.
But when I look at all my early earthly desires, I feel like that works out about right. I feel like anyone I had feelings for might well have said, 'Hey, I brought back the Pyrex of your love, it was, um, interesting, thanks for letting me have it for a while.'
Talking about unrequited love is, unsurprisingly, the easy part. People go to everything from therapy to yoga to kickboxing to the ice-cream aisle to deal with heartbreak.
You can not be loved in a million more ways, but the heartbreakingest part of all is that the world so seldom opens a space for us to talk about most of them. We are wired to listen to the stories about unloving lovers, spouses decamping, and the one that got away.
But.
What happens when you think your family does not love you? When they give zero affection or attention? Maybe the neglect came from mother, father, siblings and anyone else who was around. Maybe it was only one significant figure who did the rejecting. And no, this does not only happen to the indigent or the offspring of drug mules. This happens in families you know. You know how sometimes one small act can make you feel loved? It works the other way too. It's incredibly easy to make someone feel unloved.
We need understanding, interest, empathy and mutual respect. We need listening, remembering, forgiving, sharing. We need to be allowed to explain and to let others do the same. We need to take and give time to heal.
Yes, we are part of our families, but we are individuals. And if we feel there's no support for that, things can get ugly. How many mental health problems start right here? They may not all be tied to love unrequited, but to family, yes.
In another world, when my work does not love me back, I get a pain in my chest that's a lot like the romantic break-up pain.
Some people simply don't love their jobs, and that's a different story. Some are overworked, have terrible bosses, or are dissatisfied with their salaries. These are bad situations, but not the pain of which I speak.
When you love what you do, you find it difficult to give up on it. If there is a problem, you sit up with it like a sick child. You fret. If you have a new project or a new idea, you fuss over it so everyone will see its extraordinary potential the way you do.
And sometimes, it just doesn't
