Browsing through Nutang lately has made me think of this quote by Marcel Proust:

"Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two.”

How true. Consider, for example, one you may have loved, who broke your heart. The day before she broke your heart, her name was like a butterfly who came to alight on your tongue, and you direct the conversation carefully so that her name stays there as long as possible. This can make you a very poor conversationalist as far as your friends are concerned. It's kind of hard to speak well or with abundant wit when you have a large, winged insect sitting on your tongue. Not to mention the fact that its little, curious probiscus would make you giggle insanely. Unless it was the WHITE butterfly of the butterfly museum of Massachusetts, because those fucking things hurt you!!! Especially when you do this:



In the course of several days, hours, minutes, this person's name can become the damn pixie moth infestation that you can't get out of your room. No matter how many times you see a pixie moth and viciously kill it and throw it in the bin, you will always find another... another reference, another reminder, another DAMN MOTH that you CANNOT EXPUNGE!!! It infects your mind, your dreams (if you can sleep at all!) You sit in class and want to write that name in secret, elaborate languages, surrounded by tragic song lyrics, letting the lecture pass over you like you were a stone in a stream, the words having no real effect on you besides to slowly wear you away. But you don't want that name in your notebook. You don't want it ANYWHERE. You want to talk about it all the time, but when you do it makes your mouth feel dry and gross, and it makes your stomach hurt with rememberance. You oscillate between intense anger, thinking that it would be easier for you if that person had been in a tragic accident and killed instead alive somewhere, going about his day, not wanting you or loving you or caring if you are alive and in pain.
Then your mood changes to the sort of desperate, groggy echo of the love you felt before. You want everything good for that person. You want her to be happy, even if it means that you must drag yourself through the gutter every day for the rest of your life, scraping your face on the abrasive sidewalk, sucking up bits of what was like a catfish on an aquarium wall. You believe that you'll feel like this forever, you'll be in love with her forever. You don't want to think thoughts about how you'll forget her someday, because you don't want to forget her. If you forget the love that you shared, doesn't that mean that it was less somehow? You don't want this person and this love to fade into the past. It would take away everything that was real about it.
This mood usually gives way to despair. WHY? WHY doesn't he like me? What is wrong with me? Why can't he see that I am everything he's ever wanted or needed and *she* is so wrong for him in every way?!?!
In my opinion, this is the worst part. Make it pass quickly, or you will do something you regret. All three of these moods are both painful and incredibly destructive. This calls for another quote by Marcel Proust:

"Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliberations and on the basis of particular qualities or advantages."

The truth is, this person who just broke your heart isn't the right one for you. And if she chose someone else, or just didn't choose you, it likely isn't because he is better, or more handsome, or more appealing, or of better character. If she did choose him for these qualities then she probably isn't actually in love with him (or you). Love isn't rational. Or kind. So think about it: You didn't choose to fall in love with her. At this point you might even realize that had you had your wits about you you probably would have chosen *not* to fall in love with her. She is governed by the same principles. She's probably fallen in love with some asshole, and she'll figure that out later, and she'll read this Marcel Proust quote and nod sadly because she'll know it's true. But that will not make her fall back in love with you. You don't get to pick. Ever.

Another uplifting quote:

We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
Marcel Proust

So he breaks your heart. You can't heal from that by immediately dating somebody else. You can't hide your emotions, you have to slog through every step, questioning everything, feeling miserable, etc. It sucks. I hate it.
And finally:

“Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians”
Marcel Proust

You don't have to be sick forever. Cry a river, build a bridge, and get over it.
This person who broke your heart, you don't really want to remember him. It could take years to forget him. You know how when you're falling asleep and if all you think about is falling asleep, it makes it impossible to fall asleep? Well, you need to develop that falling-away-from-this-plane-of-existence kind of attitude that leads to actual sleep. You have to go through all your things and expunge his memory. Then you have to go out and focus on doing all the things you never had time for because you were wasting it on him. At first you can do this simply so it looks like you are busy and happy and you want to make him feel bad. Everybody does that, if that will get you out of the house, then by all means do it. Fake smiles can create smile lines and pave the way for real ones. This will distract your mind from any remaining pixie moths.

After a long time goes by, after you've started to have recreational crushes on random people again, after you've made yourself a more interesting and desirable person through a combination of spiteful reasons and real self-improving ones, you might see your former object of affection again. She might come in with some mutual friends. You might have to hug each other in greeting. During a period of weeks or months or years, that hug will be something special... it will be centered on the stomach, stomach-to-stomach. It will last a little longer than it should. It will be infused with meaning. It will be slightly melodramatic and bittersweet. You'll wonder if the mutual friends were paying attention to the awkwardness and irony of it all.

But eventually, the two of you will exchange a hug, somewhere, for some reason, and the feeling will have totally disappeared. It isn't a hollow feeling, but a full one- but inanimate, like you're expecting to touch a hot pan and it turns out to be room temperature. Nothing. The absence of feeling.

I remember I did this to a guy once. An embrace involves two people, but it is always controlled by the one who cares least. It can be extended by the one who cares more, of course, but the tone is completely set by the one who cares least. So this guy, our hugs were always of the kind described above, even when I hated him, and one day I saw him and everything I had ever felt had disappated: this includes love, anger, envy, pity, and hate. The hug was short and filled with nothing. When it ended I could tell that he knew that and he hadn't been expecting it. The satisfaction I should have felt was dulled by indifference.

Somewhat recently someone did that to me... it was weird. We'd never gone out nor had either of us tried to effect that end. However, there had always been something there, even when he was dating other girls. But recently he's been dating this one girl that he really likes for a while, and they've become, as he tells me, "serious... whatever that means." So when we embraced the last time, all of that specialness that used to be there was conspicuously absent. It was only then when I realized what the extent of their relationship must be and how it had obviously changed from the last time we'd met. It made me happy in a way, because I like them both and knowing the depth of his affection for her made me think that they might last. But it also made me feel bereft. Funny how much meaning can be encapsulated in the absence of tangible emotion.

At this stage, the name of your former beloved to you like a miller moth in a park outside. Small, unimportant, not a cause of concern. Almost as soon as you note its existence you forget about it. That person that you never wanted to forget has slowly turned into somebody that you wouldn't mind forgetting about. And while the memory of your love is never lost, it is relegated to the past where it belongs. You can call it up whenever you wish (you'll find you won't often choose to call it up) but it doesn't haunt your present.

You are free.

you are wise beyond your years
» spunky on 2007-01-16 12:45:44

this Marcel Proust, I'm assuming he has a book? I think I'd like to start there. Note me. :)
Miss Zanzibar - If Texas wasn't so boring I'd wish you were here so we could go get some tea or coffee somewhere and talk. I think we'd have a blast.

I'll never look at a butterfly the same way ever again - yet I never have looked at them the same way everyone else does either.
» Helena on 2007-01-16 01:29:54

GRE
perhaps you misunderstood his true feelings for you. there might be much more there
» ZZ on 2007-01-16 02:30:51

well, spunky, as they say- good judgment comes from experience, and experience usually comes from bad judgment. Personally I'd had all the bad judgment I needed to write that by the end of my first semester in college. ;) Since then I've started looking at the process more rationally (though with unfortunately no less sentimentality), and also learning from the tales of others. I wrote this mostly in response to another nutang member's story and feelings, so a lot of things here are things I believe to be shared by many... and because the comment box is just too small for me to say everything I had to say!! :p
» Zanzibar on 2007-01-17 09:15:57

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