I am Un-Loved

I am unloved. It is not to be confused with the sentiment “I am not loved.” No, to be “unloved” is something completely unique. Look at it literally, in the Orwellian sense, the opposite of love, is not really hate, love is it’s own emotion, and hate is it’s own emotion, and the opposite of those can only be the absence of one. I.e. the opposite of Love, is un-love, and the opposite of hate, is un-hate. Which leads me to, what is this Un-lovedness, and why would I be feeling such. Again, I know that there are people out there that love me, that care about me, and that want to see me happy, and a full person. I know and trust that to be true. But that is not how I feel.

Here comes the honesty part, I am in the process of being treated for a moderately-severe Major Depression. It is a Major Depression, not because it is huge and deep, but because it has been going on for the past year, and because it wasn’t situational. Treatment is going well, but it’s hard work. I am forced to see this as a physical illness. Part of my body chemistry is unbalanced, meaning that chemically it is not possible for me to feel as happy as other people. So drug therapy can help combat that, but it is psychologically formed. Antidepressant medication is like wearing water-wings when learning how to swim. They keep the individual afloat while they learn front-crawl and balance in the water. As they learn the strokes, the water-wings become unnecessary, and they can swim on their own. I am learning how to swim.

But I keep coming back to the idea that therapy is hard work, it is the non-physical treatment of a physical illness. Anyone who thinks that it is just sitting on a couch talking to a shrink about your childhood of wearing high heels and sneaking around your mother’s closet has obviously never done any and should keep their opinions to themselves. I don’t tell you what it is like to experience something that I have never done.

What un-love feels like? It is indeed a feeling, not a lack of a feeling. First I think I have to talk about what love feels like though to get to it’s opposite. Love is feeling like a human, that mistakes are forgivable, that I am a good person, that I have a right to care about someone, that it’s OK to feel sad and happy, that it’s a good thing to feel like I should solve my problems, that I should feel missed, that I miss others, and that I want to reach out and touch the warm spot next to me in the morning where someone was sleeping. That to me, is love, all of those sensations mixed in a cocktail and poured down the gullet. This brings me to un-love. Un-love means that I do not feel like I am human, that it is raw emotion with no cushioning, that my mistakes are unforgivable, because I do not deserve to be forgiven, that ultimately my pain and suffering merits the non-response of people around me, it is the feeling of only guilt when I am happy, that I have no right to be happy because of what I am, that I shouldn’t care about people because they are not affected by my care for them and for them it doesn’t matter that I care about them (again not necessarily a true sentiment, but how I feel), and when I wake up in the morning I stare at the ceiling and go through the day trying just to list the little joys that I hope to encounter.

For the past week, I roll out of bed around 8:30, give or take 3 and a half minutes without an alarm. And I play two songs on my iPod, the first being, The Fray’s “How to save a Life” Followed by the unplugged version of Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.” During these two songs I stretch and wake up my soul. Go about my morning business, sneak in a workout, do some reading and have my day. It’s working for me so far, but for now, I must know this feeling of Un-love as to appreciate again the feeling of Love in it’s fullness.

Cheers.