You Promised

I just overheard a few lines of a loud couple’s spat. One of them shouted “You promised you wouldn’t break my heart!”

The seventeen-year-old with me commented “That’s a pretty stupid thing to promise.”

I agreed with her, and it made me think about my attitude toward relationships. Have I become cynical about love?

Poetry is full of feelings about love. New love, old love, lost love, unrequited love, sexual love, fraternal love…love in all its forms.

Poetry is full of the ways love makes us feel. Therapy sessions are full of talk about the love we want or our feelings of betrayal about the love we don’t have.

I always wanted the love of others to make me feel better about myself. I used it, along with substances or other forms of escapism, to soothe my fears and frustrations. It didn’t help that I had no idea what love actually looked like. I wanted something, and when I didn’t get it I felt neglected and resentful.

It’s taken me decades to learn that nobody owes me love. That I can’t win love, earn love, manipulate love or simulate love. That love is beyond my understanding or my power to control. Do I feel sad or lonely when I want someone to love me and they don’t? Yes. But I no longer feel like a victim or believe there’s some way I could change it.

I wouldn’t ask anyone to promise they won’t break my heart, and I can’t promise I won’t break theirs.