Love Is a Losing Game
Image Courtesy: Pinterest
To love is an incredibly advertised spectacle. 20 years ago, to get our fix, women would check the tabloids, aching to feel the range of emotions that the celebrities and socialites had constant access to. Now, the glamour has dimmed, and we are left to reside in our reality: the dating pool is trash.
Over the course of my life, I have had my ups and most certainly my downs. And perhaps my expectations were too high, but more likely, love is simply a losing game. Amy Winehouse became a muse to convey my frustrations. Her artistry was sustained through the extremes she struggled with, and her death was attributed to an “inability to manage a self-chose rock and roll lifestyle” (Rock and roll or rock and fall?, 2014). My understanding of how her alcoholism and drug abuse shaped her music lies in the impact of that addiction on human experience. We chase the thrill of ecstasy, and chaos comes into being to spite us for it. For me, Amy Winehouse represented what I knew all too well: our passions dictate our lives.
Every utterance I held tight to my chest of time wasted and heart aching could be actualized in just a couple of lines. I wanted badly to perceive my relationships as detached from my being; as intimacy built like a fortress enclosing the body, I would be left with no choice but to flee before its walls rose too high and far. Winehouse described her love as akin to “a flame”. And oh, what a “mess we [have made]”, but when the flame turns to fire, love’s ashes are gained.
I am here to argue in love’s favor for once; to swear off cynicism for the sake of fulfillment. For I heard once that love cannot breathe on its own. We must assist it to formalize the existence of a pre-existing truth, to strip ourselves of our excessively accessible comforts for the sake of growth. There is a looming threat to unity, one that keeps us from going for the man who doesn’t make enough money or is two inches shorter than he claimed on the apps. And no, I am not pimping out women as a whole to an unfit pool of men who will never respect us; I am instead calling for us to risk the theoretical nature of love. It is the thing that has perhaps made the world more defined.
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Romantic relationships are not, however, at the center of what love means to us as humans. Our exterior is toughened by each betrayal, awkward conversation, or lack of reciprocation, but, as Andrea Dworkin writes, “skin is the mask love strips away”. It is an invitation for us to give more. To disregard our distrust in the innards of man and choose to put it all on the line for a chance at a greater happiness.
Love does not limit, it frees. It gives us life, as much as it seizes it. Amy Winehouse acknowledges its ferocity, which is true of character, but to that I beg that we give grace to love lost. To love torn from our fingertips and to love that feels less righteous once it is all over.
Strike Out,
Writer: Sarah Weber
Editor: Melany Rodriguez
Graphic Designer: Emma Murphy
Tallahassee