Repeated Mirages of the Heart

It's 4.30 a.m. in the morning. I'm wide awake, asking myself some really hard questions.

I'm questioning my good judgment on people's characters - could I have been SO wrong? Was there any justification in the faith that I had put in you - or was I clouded by what I wished to see?

In a sense, I felt I knew you best - where the others did not. My judgment should be based on what I saw and felt - for the others, did not know you. Even the benefit of the doubt, that I gave you. The faith and belief that I put in your loving words and gestures. It made me believe in us - in the possibility of our future together.

Did I delude myself? Were you just playing me out? Are you keeping your options open?

Matters of the heart, were always clear to me. My choices were always full of clarity - the only times I've gone wrong is when I've ignored the choice and will of my heart. But I always knew what I wanted in my heart, when I listened to it.

But I thought, that perhaps, that it's different for other people. Maybe they don't trust the judgment of their hearts. Maybe they're a bit more practical - maybe their minds always overcame - even in matters of the heart. Maybe they've grown up believing that happiness is this middle road between contentment and stagnation, in their relationships - not entirely happy, but stable in its inadequacy.

After all, cynics are never wrong. They don't leave any space for their judgment to be wrong - any ill-fated event is expected and any form of joy, is just an exception to the rule.

But surely, there must be characteristics common, to all things called love.

When you say you love someone, there must be a degree of respect, loyalty and exclusivity. There must be a deeper certainty, beyond the type of day-to-day niggling doubts that we may face in our professional or working life. There must be a feeling that you don't want to be with anyone else - and hurting the other person is anathema to you.

Do all people love the same way? Or is it open-ended for some of us?

To say I love you - even when I can't commit or till I don't. That I'm loyal to you - when the circumstances allows for it. That I'll commit to you - when I bloody well feel darn ready - and before that, please don't take my expressions of affection and dreams of the future, seriously - I'm just going with the thrill of the moment.

And that you'd just have to share my love with another, until I decide whether I should commit to you. Perhaps, on the pretext that it's the fairest thing to do, for all parties. Please don't get hurt - it's not personal - it's just the "professional" thing to do.

Could it be that some of us can only love (or claim to love) in a cold, unconscionable, heartless manner? Where the "I" comes much further ahead than the "we?"? Or even "you that I love?"

Is there nothing anymore, that's sacrosanct? Has love, respect, loyalty and consideration become negotiable nowadays, to some of us? A cheap commodity that's available anywhere?

Deep down inside of me, I know that these values are non-negotiable. For anyone.

Was there any part of your love that was true? When we sat down and discussed future possibilities of family, children and growing old together? Was any part of that real - or were you just keeping me "warm" - to exercise the option, should you decide to? A spare tyre, when your notions of the adequacy of a loveless stability is punctured, with another?

Does it not hurt you, when you hurt me like this? Or it this all part and parcel of what you think maturity is, in the real world?

Was there really any real chance between us? Did you believe so? Or were just playing with me - letting on me build on my willful mirage? A mirage that came repeatedly, too - like a broken record, as one of my friends would say.

I quiver inside, at the thought, that I could I have been SO wrong about you. :( The evidence, seems to incontrovertibly, point that way. And nothing but my deep faith and love in you, keeps me from believing otherwise.

God Almighty, give the truth the strength to surface. And take away this willful mirage from me, if my faith in her, has been misplaced. Perhaps, my eyes and judgment, are as blind as her heart.

I hope not.