When LOVE is enough

Have you ever loved someone 

but did not feel loved in return? 

Unrequited or unreciprocated love is very common in relationships that are abusive or that involve loving a person with mental illness. 

It is NOT your fault.

Why do we seem to think that HOW WE LOVE depends upon whom we love??? Really, isn't the ACT of love really dependent upon our hearts and their proper function and the subjects of our EXPRESSION of love are simply the lucky recipients of our affection???

To LOVE and to be LOVING are as different as the BEING IN LOVE and LOVING another person. It is like Erich Fromm's book "To Have and To Be"...We LOVE and that is an ACT OF BEING...To EXPRESS that love is deliberate action toward a SUBJECT whom we HAVE in our lives, and that is LOVING another person.

When I think of this; I am comforted. The saying " 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all". (Alfred, Lord Tennyson) actually comforts me in that it is evident that I LOVE. Therefore; ultimately, the SUBJECT of that love, specifically being a person whom is unable to return that love through mental illness usually (One can say that he is CRAZY for not loving me; but he did and I believe STILL DOES; even after 30 years) is NOT the "deal breaker". I love him though I am not permitted to EXPRESS my love for him. Oh, I am not delusional. I know that I have always loved him and believe that he STILL loves me very deeply; there is "just something there" that will not allow him to receive and reciprocate the love that I have for him. That does NOT change the FACT that I "LOVE" and I LOVE deeply. 

And then there is the feeling of rejection of unrequited love...
as Todd Rundgren sang in a song, it "robs me of me rest".

Todd Rundgren – Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song

Love unrequited, robs me of me rest, 

Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers, 

Love, nightmare like, lies heavy of me chest, 

And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers. 

*****        large middle section omitted    *****

You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and 

No wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor 

And you've needles and pins from your soles to your 

Shins, and your flesh is acreep, for your left leg's asleep, 

And you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, 

And some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, 

And a thirst that's intense, 

And a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in Clover; 

But the darkness has pass'd, and it's daylight at Last, 

and the night has been long, ditto, ditto my Song, 

And thank goodness they're both of them over!

Overall, I feel that I "lost the love" of my first love, or more accurately, he has promised me and taken it back and thrown hate and despising at me in order to "get me to stop loving him???" Too bad. I have not lost m ability or capacity TO LOVE. I am comforted IN MY OWN LOVE whether or not is is confirmed, accepted or reciprocated by any one else. 

Talk about "taking our power" back. 

I have mine. 

It's called LOVE.