It sneaks up on us insidiously, and weaves it's way into our neurochemistry so that whether we invite it in or not, the choice quickly becomes no longer our own.
I thought of the love that i was afflicted with as a parasite, making me physically sick and siphoning off my energies, but my understanding of what I let happen to me has changed and I no longer see it as such. Even better... I see it as a full on disease process. Love is a pathology. Even if the relationship was horrid, if love was involved the withdrawal is like coming off cocaine. It's a damn good thing that I don't do drugs and never have.
even plato seemed to believe way back when that love was a serious mental disorder. I don't really need to get into the actual neurotransmitters and/or hormones involved like oxytocin and vasopressin and the similarities between those suffering from hypomania and those afflicted with love or loss of love. It affects us like a raging disease running rampant on our brains with it's messed up circuitry masquerading as pleasure when we have it and pain when we lose it. Symptoms of sleep and eating disturbances come out of nowhere as the gremlins of illusion build themselves into willful personality disorders. Love is a personality disorder. All that oxytocin even allows us to overlook our lovers worst qualities because we see everything with rainbows superimposed on our retinas.
I thought I had takotsubo syndrome. Takutsubo is a type of cardiomyopathy. It's otherwise known as octopus heart syndrome. I was sure I had it. It happens when you experience so much grief over a loss that your heart responds with apical ballooning basically so it looks like an octopus squirting ink or like an octupus trap used in japan. The myocardial tissue becomes over fatigued and acts as though it's paralyzed preventing proper function although conductivity remains normal. The interesting aspect is that it even occurs in the absence of arterial disease or coronary blockage. It's possible to die or recover from it and women in general are the most at risk, although I have to admit it is fairly uncommon and I haven't even seen it ever in my clinical experience. But I was convinced that I had it. The extreme pain in my chest, the overwhelming fatigue, the shortness of breath.. I literally convinced myself that I was surely going to keel over any minute because my heart was turning into a live octupus. When did I turn into a grade A hypochondriac?
3 comments:
I agree.
Love is an emotional disorder.
Heck, emotion is a hormonal disorder!
so which is better? ... to numb overselves into emotional oblivion so that we can't respond to the beauty of day to day life but we also no longer feel the searing pain of our emotions or to feel everything and toughen ourselves from the inside out.
emotions can be a function of hormone balance but it's a shame we haven't figured out a way to quantify that balance to control it at our whim yet... I mean we can to some extent, drugs of all sort abound that affect our behaviour. I've never taken anything but it's very tempting.
The temptation itself is addictive.
I've never been an alcoholic or a smoker.But whenever I get sad, the first thing that comes to my mind is to hold a cigar and blow all my thoughts away or to sink my sorrows in alcohol.
In that way, I'm a recovering addicted although I was never physically addicted to any substance!
On the subject of love/emotions.I/We need to toughen ourselves from inside out.The simple knowledge of the fact that people aren't perfect and are bound to make mistakes and hurt us is very liberating.Having no expectation from anyone leaves a big room for surprise.
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