Stormy love affairs are often the subject of soap operas and epic sagas in literature. Hollywood makes more money off of the "personal lives" of their elite stars than they do from the films the stars appear in
--the Western world at large, devours the scandals and seductions of interchangeable celebrities and pop-stars du jour. The internet is flooded with gossip sites and forums that allow 12 year old girls to idealize the shapes and pretentious schticks of glorified "popular girls" like the Kardashians and 27 year old guys to ogle and judge the relative hotness of such televised sensations with the deluded belief their lives emulate that of reality shows that have nothing to do with reality.
But when your legal assistant is often running to the bathroom in tears or seen with her on-again-off-again beau who allegedly swats her in and out of his life like a spastic ping pong ball, people will instantly say "so much 'drama' with those two". The dismissive and judgmental phrase implies the emotions and happenings between the said couple are somehow less serious than what one might feel about his or her own life issues. There are people who are adept in avoiding drama at all cost. And yet, I'd be willing to bet, those people are the cause of much heartache to someone else who just wants to be close to them but doesn't get the chance. Drama is not TNT, it is life.
I am a person who takes offense at the liberal use and misuse of the word "dramatic". Being animated is not necessarily being dramatic. As someone who "gets noticed" even when I am just fixing a bobby pin in my unwashed hair at the neighborhood deli, I find the attention upon me is often construed with accusations of causing my own drama. It has troubled me in recent years and made me acutely aware of watchful eyes and disingenuous people. I have been accused of drama in my most vulnerable moments and my most unmemorable interactions of good intention. I have learned that being called dramatic can easily be a stigma placed on people who are demonstrative and emotionally open. Somehow, people who are openly sensitive or perceptively interested in the feelings and reasoning of others, are at more "risk" for being labeled a drama queen or overly-emotional or too-sensitive. And yet, people who are quick to detach from situations are seen as measured and rational. The ideas contradict the nature of humanity, which, essentially, is not JUST the survival of the fittest but also the ability to be empathic and, yes, vulnerable.
There are those who think love is something that should come easily and calmly. I always wanted that kind of an experience. While finding love has never been especially difficult for me, making it last has always come with a lot of conditions, which, in the end, doesn't feel like love, it feels like... pain. And this is where I hear "You have so much drama! Don't you want a relationship that is just easy?". Anyone would. But how many real relationships are actually easy? I know many people who have barely uttered a harsh word to the other, but live a quiet, static and joyless existence. I know couples that do everything together and are the "perfect match", but one if not both often complains regularly to their buddies that they are tired of keeping up appearances. I know couples that adore each other but suffer in private with tense evenings and sorrowful mornings as they struggle to conceive a child. --I know marriages that have ended because of it. I know couples that have lost a child and never found themselves again, and live very catatonic lives behind closed doors. Do people call their lives "dramatic"? Hell no. But when a somewhat glamorous woman and a debonaire older man genuinely love each other -passionately and openly- and argue with the same fervor, people are salivating to judge them as dramatic or... unserious. And popular opinion leaks into the background of each person's rational; somewhere along the way, removed family members or nosey acquaintances can provoke a doubt in each person, and that doubt becomes the premise of altered behavior, unfounded assumptions, and tainted perspectives that inflate any issue at hand. And these are everyday people who are not on television or in tabloids. So imagine the celebrities who finagle their lives around the roar of the crowd that makes or breaks their People's Choice Award nominations.
Love is hard. Being in love is wonderful; staying in love takes patience, understanding, empathy and thoughtfulness. This goes for two farmers in rural Iowa that have been married 48 years, and the 48 year old business moguls on Wall Street, as well as the broke 23 year old actors that are living with their in-laws for the first 2 years of marriage. And it goes for the jazz singer and high powered attorney that have brought out the absolute best and the absolute worst in each other. Some believe that a happy median is always the answer. When a person is wired to feel things strongly and unabashedly, that person is unlikely to find content with another person who does not experience things in that manner. The dynamics of passion and chemistry are intertwined with psychology and character, yes, but the tumult to thrive inside the center of levity, versus the danger to allow the tumult to dictate the outcome of peace becomes the rumbling question. I'm no stranger to dysfunction, and I have, for years, questioned my own sanity in the midst of love's chaos, and I have discovered my proclivity for loving difficult or unconventional or even "damaged" people... But who isn't damaged who has ever ventured to love unconditionally? I know a loving couple that have thrived together for years-- the husband is severely schizophrenic and she is years younger than he is. My godmother's son has Compulsive Obsessive Personality Disorder and has been medicated since early childhood. Over the years, he has resisted medication at times or claimed he no longer needed it, but the proof is in the way he affects those who love him most when he is not medicated. His relationships returned to a volatile state, he withdraws socially or fixates on unhealthy situations... He is now in his late twenties and in a healthy, loving, sweet relationship and realizes he can never go off this medication if he wants the benefits of this love as his personality is too painful to be around without such medical and therapeutic assistance. He is a great man, soon to be a surgeon. The bravery of choosing to acknowledge his need for help has salvaged his future in every single way. The stormy patterns of love can often be traced to the imbalance of communication, empathy and outside support.
Napoleon's great love, the Parisian Josephine de Beauharnis, an older woman than he, was someone he lustfully pursued for significant time-- she resisted him from the beginning, with doubts of his sincerity and little attraction to him initially. She was talked into marrying him, ironically, by her then-husband who was in love with another woman and wanted a divorce (who later was beheaded and Josephine, being his wife, almost joined him, but I digress). To Napoleon's oblivion, she was flagrantly unfaithful throughout his time in Italy during the onset of the war in 1796; it was only when he decided to have affairs, that Josephine fell madly in love with him. (Drama, anyone?)... When he divorced her and married a younger woman around 1810, Josephine was crushed. Through a string of defeats in battle, Napoleon was exiled to Elba Island about four years later and his wife and son left him. It is said that Josephine did everything she could to get to Napoleon to join him on Elba Island, but ended up dying in her endeavor "of a broken heart"-- ACCORDING TO HER DOCTOR! Napoleon escaped to Paris, where he picked violets from Josephine's garden and wore them in a locket until he died. Yes, he had syphilis, and was said to go crazy from it, but, whatever... he mourned the loss of Josephine until his death. Stick with me, people! I'm just saying, Napoleon's "complex" might have gone beyond his short-height, ya know?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMKy3Caci80
I reiterate. Love is hard. And while I have heard many times in my (ahem) young life, that "It shouldn't be this hard; you are settling for something beneath you- for what?!", I also recognize that it is in my nature to not settle for what is easiest. People have accused me of settling for men that do not "deserve" me. I think, in contrast to this perspective, no one knows more than I do, what it means to love without expectation, and in my tribulations as a "female jazz artist", and my determination to blaze my own trail (however overlooked it may be in the presence of majestic gardens of accomplishment I strive to live up to), I DO know that nothing great, in my life, at least, has ever come all that easily. It's noteworthy to mention my resentment of this very fact has ignited bouts of (misplaced?) rage, depression and self-pity. And let's face it, living out loud does not make for a docile spouse. Sometimes I feel shame for not being a more malleable personality and then I overcompensate in exactly the wrong areas of life, such as letting acquaintances take full advantage of this very obvious insecurity. But generally, my passion to live fully and love passionately trumps my wish for respite from this trying journey. And to many, I suppose, that actually crystalizes my image as a person wrapped up in drama. But to me, that thought reduces the deeper issue: I want to love and be loved --passionately, loudly, unapologetically and selflessly to the last breath. And the cognizant romanticism I engulf my existence in does a lot to let me down when faced with words like "pre-nuptual agreement" and "estimated life-value" (in life insurance policies). So... I am caught like the moon at dawn between the world of cynicism and the heart of optimism. Where I have surrendered my dignity I have mightily defended the vow of love; I do not want to be Napoleon, carrying violets for a love that was
-too late realized- worth the inconvenience of imperfect situations.
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