Love Can Be Terrifying

Imagine love as a person. Physically what would it look like? If you aren’t afraid of and completely embrace love, it might appear kind and gentle. If you haven’t had the most positive interactions with Love, we see a Scream mask-wearing, Freddy Krueger hands-having monster. It’s terrifying. Lurking in the backdrop, appearing when we least expect it, attacking before we have time to think, haunting our dreams.

It’s valid to fear love. It’s put some of our closest friends in excruciating emotional pain. It tortures them for months at a time, in such brutal fashion that the effects can last a lifetime. Love permanently changes people, and not always for the better. It makes people cautious, doubtful, hopeless, angry, depressed.

Love can give all the power to one side, letting the other fight a losing battle. Love has overridden the control system of those in it, leaving a reckless pilot in charge. Love has made people seek it out on fool’s errands, act irrationally and do things they later regret. It has made many crash and burn.

Love tricked our parents into thinking they found it, and then they got divorced. Love resulted in two people hating each other. It wasn’t strong enough to save them, and it probably won’t be strong enough to save us. But is all this accurate? Can we blame love for unhappiness? Maybe love has its role to play, and we’re responsible for the rest.

You can fear love or you can consider it in practical terms. The person you were with, the circumstances of your relationship. Maybe love had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was lust’s imitation of love. Maybe it’s circumstance testing love’s strength. Maybe you were hurt by everything but love.

Imagine love as a substance. What would its effects be on you? Love isn’t something you can outrun — it’s self-made. We create love. We put ourselves at risk. We get hooked on our own supply. You shouldn’t fear love, you should fear the concept of creating a bad batch and getting addicted to it. You should fear that you might be unable to function without your fix. The folks who encourage our temporary fix are the doctors who write unwarranted prescriptions.

There might be a person who will show you a different side of love, and together, you’ll create something amazing. Even if things get hard at times, you’re both emotionally invested, so you’ll work out the kinks together. And in a way, that’s the strongest, not-so-scary love there is. 

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image – The Shining