Yes, yes, I know it seems as though I can’t get enough of the Smashing Pumpkins this year. But tonight, tonight has been speaking volumes to me over the past 8 months.
This particular line, the title of my post, more than the one I love to trip on (believe in the resolute urgency of now) really rips at my gut. In the middle of a song about living in the moment, they drop this excruciating, hard to accept brick at you – the more you change, the less you feel. And you can’t help but realize how true it is.
This post has been on my mind for a while but I just can’t seem to find the right words to say it with. I’ve had many conversations with friends over the past few weeks about it too. All about the fact that we’re unable to feel like we used to. That inability to feel those intense emotions we used to feel when we were younger. The rush, the feel, the thrill of the chase and even the pain of loss all seem mellowed down versions of what they used to be. But the biggest grouse is if I am actually able to love again. Or hurt intensely again as a result of that love turning sour. Am I only meant to have that one great love in my life? Isn’t it possible to love again? To feel those things that made me realize that I am alive? It’s saddening to grow up if this is what growing up turns you into. Or is it simply a mind block? Or is it that the person I will be able to feel those things about hasn’t quite come around yet?
A friend was telling me that he ended a relationship that was near perfection to him because he realized that he really wasn’t feeling it. That amazing gut-wrenching feeling that he felt with the last person he was in love with simply wasn’t there. And I couldn’t help but nod in agreement and get quite worked up about it because it’s exactly the same with me. The more we change and the more we grow up, the less we are able to feel. Our minds tend to over power our hearts instead of it being the other way around, the way it used to be. Another friend told me that when he broke up with a girlfriend years ago he was shattered but when he recently broke up with his last girlfriend, things felt so very different. Yes, he missed the loss of the familiarity of having her around, but he said it was all very adult and he didn’t feel like his world was ripped apart.
With me, I doubt it has anything to do with inner strength or anything like it. I just feel that as I grow stronger as a person, my heart grows weaker. At the soul, the core of my being was someone who used to get a rush out of things and all I feel now are mediocre emotions. I listen to love songs, watch soppy movies, pine for Heathcliff… all to no avail because they just make me long for what I have lost even more so. Every nerve ending used to be charged with emotions. Not to say I was emo or anything like that, but my heart used to be my strongest asset. I used to feel for people, for causes, for everything. And now all I have is a consciously forced push in that direction because heading in the opposite one will surely be the death of me. I can’t be cold. That for sure, is not in me to be. But lukewarm is a far more saddening state of being, don’t you think?
As oxymoronish (I coined a word!) as it may sound, it is really heart breaking that my heart may not break again.
Mended Heart by Metaltamer
The Missing Sandwich 