Unrequited

Unrequited…  alone this word is sad, melancholic, monstrous, soul cracking. But then you pair it with affection, attention, love, and it becomes life changing.

Whether you are just stepping into the chasm of oblivious responses and unrecognized sincerity or you’ve been trudging this path for years of unthanked attentions it still feels the same. Just somehow older and deeper and it crawls through your entire being, gnawing at your intelligent notions of right and wrong, do and don’t. 

The thing about this lowest of base emotions is how acutely it effects everyone who is in arm’s length. How can the sound of love falling over a cliff and breaking at the bottom be heard by everyone around but not the intended? I think this is false. I think the intended nearly always hears their unloved hearts break. But in having no intension of returning such a fierce need the most humane road is to ignore it. 

As the giver it’s enough to ache your chest and disrupt your dreams, manifest into beautifully imagined futures. Once it’s been built so high the louder the fall when reality takes hold and the pounding in your ears is literally your dreams crashing in your mind. 

As the receiver… no one talks about that though. The receiver is supposed to be dense to it. A smiling friend.  A trusted confidant. A silent coward.

As the observer, watching the most fucked up action of the human heart is uncomfortable and disconcerting.