“And I never wanted anything from you

Except everything you had

And what was left after that too.”

The dog days: we’ve all had ours.  Traditionally, dog days were a reference to the hottest summer days; days which were so brutally hot that we couldn’t be bothered to stir.  It’s a fitting enough analogy if you’ve ever had a dog.  I would extend the analogy to say, “If you’ve ever fully experienced your humanity enough to the extent that you have loved and subsequently lost the energy to move forward.”

I’m a romantic at heart, so there’s no telling how many times I’ve thought I was in love.  It’s been proclaimed in any number of ways over the years to however many partners I might have deemed worthy of such proclamations on my behalf.

But there’s dress rehearsal and then there’s the real thing.  And the real thing didn’t hit me until I was thirty years old.  Incidentally, by that time, I had been married for four years and divorced for another four.

There may have been men before that man who thought they had qualified for such a lofty position, my ex-husband included, but I assure you, I am absolute about the timing.

Before the fateful event, I was the boss.  I fell in love, sure, but I remained in charge.  All was orchestrated according to my plan, for the most part. Why that might have been, do you ask? : Quite simply, because the weight of the emotion was equally balanced on both sides.  Whether it was a meeting of the minds or an exercise in apathy, both parties in the equation were satisfied with the arrangement.

But I think you cannot truly understand the full power of love until you have given it to someone who is incapable of receiving it.  At least, that has been my experience.

When you pour all of your utmost energy into such a union only to have it spat back into your face, well, that is the moment when you feel humanity at its basest.  I basically crunched myself into a hyper-ball of manic energy for about two weeks (wherein I vented to all of my friends about how stupid I was/what a fool he was), did a hell of a lot of crying and introspective cyclical thinking and then?  Then I curled up into a ball for another month or so, licking my wounds.

At long last, I got back out there.  What else can you do?  Live and learn and all that.  So you got gutted like a fish?  So you felt depleted to the point of non-existence?  And?  You can either decide to be a victim or you can get on with the business of living.

And if I had a voice like Florence Welch, AKA Florence and the Machine, here, I would be ringing my badass gospel throughout the land.  Alas, I am a mere mortal who has not been blessed with such sultry vocal chords.  So my only recourse is to “pick up my pen”, or rather peck at the keys, and say a little something along the lines of this:

If you feel in your gut that you are not getting back the love you are giving, extricate yourself from that situation.  You will tell yourself that you have invested too much to just leave, but that’s bullshit.  It is.  The fact of the matter is that very few of us change.  We are who we are for the most part.  There comes a point when you can plainly see that you will never receive what you have given, and when that happens, gets to steppin’.  Every day that you hesitate is a day that you will suffer unnecessarily.

“Leave all your love and your loving behind, you can’t carry it with you if you want to survive.”

Take it from a sister who knows.

… and you’re welcome.

Florence and The Machine – The Dog Days Are Over

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Tara Noble.