Love? Get knotted!

I'm going to start to talk about love by telling you how much I hate to talk about love. Ironic, no? I'm not trying to be clever. To qualify: it's not that I don't feel it; it's not that I don't like to express it; it's just that I don't really like to discuss it when it's personal to me.

This challenge from Vocal is one with which I do not feel I can fully engage. In fact, these "talk about yourself" ones are getting on my nerves more than anything. It's like when you go on a course and you have to introduce yourself to a bunch of people you don't know or, engage in some role play with a complete stranger or, get asked your opinion when you'd really rather keep it to yourself but feel a degree of pressure to share something anyway. I want to write but in this, I'm struggling: not to find the words but because I think that love is private.

And this outlook is hard to maintain in a world that desperately wants you to show it what you've got. No offence meant, Vocal.

Do you know what I mean, reader?

I always sound so flippant in these challenges and I do and I don't mean to be. I approach them with a sense of humour, not because I'm scared of deep-delving but more because to approach them in any other way would feel false and contrived and I try to be neither of those things.

But going back to Love Unravelled - I do have some thoughts that I am willing and prepared to share.

We live in a world that desires and demands demonstration. It is one where we can see things quite readily on screens infront of us without really seeking them out.

Social media provides us with the means to look quite easily into the lives and loves of others, to peek behind the net curtain and see some of the innermost intimacies of people's lives, laid bare, either by their own contrivance or because they have been caught on camera, ensnared forever in pixellated perfection. We can be voyeurs from the comfort of our own homes or at the bus stop or in the doctor's waiting room or the toilet, if we are so inclined. None of this putting on an old raincoat and lurking outside on cold, damp streets for us lucky people! No, I can giggle at someone's romantic ineptitude without fear of retribution and I can cry with someone as they are rejected at the altar and I can cringe at the adulation shown towards an unrequited love, all without worrying about being found out. Seems very wrong to me. I know, books have been doing this for years but the immediacy of watching it changes it somehow. And the majority of it was fiction, not filmed.

It brings a whole new meaning to people watching, this New Age.

Reality TV means that we can parade ourselves if we so choose for all to see. And we get to watch others doing it. By "it", I mean parading - nothing else. I think in some ways that love, like everything else in this world we live in, has become a commodity. Love sells! Maybe it always has been a saleable item and we've just not been so "in yer face" about it. People have always married for money as well as love and dowries were as sought after as well as the intimacy for some. Do they go hand in hand? Hmmm, it's debatable.

And now, love is being used to entice you in different ways.

I think about "Love Island", "90 Day Fiancé", "Married at First Sight", "First Dates" to name a few, where love has been taken hostage and used for our entertainment. I do wonder if by forcing love to expose itself so readily for us to view, if it is not deciding to run and hide as an act of rebellion, even survival in its purest form.

Sometimes I think that the only love that we are really shown is its racy bits. Do you know what I mean? Attraction? Yes. Sex? Yes. Actual love in all its many forms? No. I think that love sees itself and its exploitation for entertainment and, ashamed and embarrassed at the way that it is being flaunted, it has decided to go to ground.

I wouldn't blame it.

Like disillusioned city types who decide to give up their materialistic monetary driven existence; their fast cars and their nights outs; their penthouse apartment with the view of the cityscape; their credit cards and designer clothes; their tech-of-tomorrow gadgets - giving it all up to become a homesteader in Alaska and work the land and enjoy the silence and dream of bear fights and windmills and wells.

Pure love looked at its own shallowness and deserted us all for the wilderness.

Imagine it in plaid with a beard and a rifle rather than the chubby cherub with its bow and arrow. Maybe that should be crossbow, not rifle.

It would go someway to explaining why the world does not seem to be filled to the brim with it. Although, with that in mind, as long as you have the right feed on your screens, you'll be able to find it but in its adulterated form.

I've seen the rawness of people's emotions presented for the audience's scrutiny and I'm not sure that I like it. Yet, even I am inexorably drawn into watching people as they seek, find, fall in, fall out of, get rejected by, be fooled by love. Its draw, cliché be damned, is magnetic. A guilty indulgence, hard to resist.

I tell myself that it's okay for me to do it because I'm just curious but that is a very lame and very dangerous excuse.

And apps. Apps to find love, like it's a new pair of shoes, or that juicer you've always needed in order to start your healthy new lifestyle. Browse and choose and maybe you'll get lucky! Love is all around us - didn't someone sing a song about that? But it seems it is not always easy to find.

Hiding.

Wouldn't you hide if you were always being asked to parade around in public in your most naked form? If you were subjected to situations that you'd never found yourself in previously and were expected to entertain? I know that I'd build myself a carapace, make myself more exclusive, become a hermit. I wouldn't want to be corralled or organised. Surely love is a free spirit?

So much store is put into finding love, it really ought to have its own store.

You heard it here first.

Jibes at technology aside, I'm okay with people putting themselves out there. Those of you that know me on this platform will know that I am a "live and let live" kind of a girl. Each to their own and all that. As long as no-one is being hurt, then go at it.

But not all of us are like that. Not all of us want to be on show.

When challenges like this are prompted, my immediate reaction is to shirk from them. I'm not into tortured self-examination or delving into my soul on a voyage of discovery and I'm certainly not into sharing it. Fuck that shit! (Pardon my language). I did enough of that when I was a teenager to last a lifetime. I don't mean that to sound derisory; for lots of people, it is a way for them to come to terms with many things: the world around them; their relationships with others; their hopes and dreams; their insecurities - Life's rich tapestry right there.

But I'm also not one for looking backwards. I've had relationships where I've loved, been loved, lost love. I've felt its warmth and its rapture; its humour and its laughter; its generosity and its demands. I feel all of that now.

I am loved and I do love.

I don't want to scour through and regurgitate all that again for a challenge. I've moved on, and whilst the upsets and desires and first encounters and thrills of love form part of who I am, they're not for everyone to see.

Imagine them like the flashy lining of a coat that you see when someone is removing it quickly. You want to examine it more and you like the colour but you won't see it again unless that person wants to put the coat on again in front of you. You are curious and beguiled but it would seem odd to ask "Can I see the lining of your coat?" Because the coat looks like a dull, practical outer garment so why the flashy, glowing, satiny interior? What does that reveal about that person? You'll never know. Just be satisfied with a glimpse.

So this is not going to be some deep discussion about my loves. It's not going to be me delving into first love or married love, trauma or triumph, family and friends, motherhood and its rewards. I'm not going to talk about the grand gesture or the moments where love has pervaded my every waking thought; where I've obsessed and embarrassed myself and pursued or been reckless in the name of love. And I can't even begin to cast about in my mind for words to describe love: its enormity, its power to heal, its pull.

That's all in the vault, the secure place called "Self-love".

Maybe I should spout some self-serving poetical musings that show how highly I think of love and all its many minions and henchmen, like kindness, courtesy, respect, consideration, etc? No. I'm sure that someone else out there can do it far better than me and with more sincerity for the challenge than I. I may be love's servant in some regards but I can't justify the thought time to describe its profundity to me.

Actually, I could: try, at least. It's rather that I won't.

Because it's mine. I don't need to shine a light on it to know it's there. I don't need to declare it to everyone to give it validation. It doesn't need an airing to keep it fresh.

At the risk of sounding Gollum-esque, it is precious. I'm keeping it hidden under a bushel where only I can really see it.

And I think love is okay with that. It's probably glad of the rest.

Now, I'd appreciate it if you'd clear off and devote yourself to something that you love more than reading my meagre writings.