Love.....or obsession?

In the past few years, I've witnessed and experience different levels of love from the love that seems to be the love of your life, to the love that simply is just for now that you know can never be more. Love can be a beautiful thing, even magical. As the character says from Moulin Rouge "Love is a many splendid thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love. The greatest thing you'll ever know is just to love and be loved in return." Which, in the right circumstances, can be true.

But on the other side of the coin, I've also witnessed heartache, experienced heartache...witnessed cheating, lying, deceit, betrayal.....all components which are NOT a part of "Love." How can you claim to love someone yet find ways to hurt them so deeply? And intentionally?

I've come to the conclusion that love simply does not exist. Sure, people "love" each other, get married, have babies and die old together. But what about those that "love" each other, and after a short amount of time, get divorced, leaving two bitter, cynical, jaded human beings that don't have even a shred of love in them anymore? They claim to be madly in love...yet somehow they could find enough love to keep from royally screwing it up.

This leads me to one thought: love is simply and utterly misinterpreted as obsession. If you look at the world around you, how many people have obsessions/addictions? Each and every human being has an obsession of some sort to some degree. Whether it's a drug, alcohol, sex, money, food, exercise, work.....couldn't love also be described as just an addiction? Or an obsession? Obsessions come and go. How many people do you know that "fall out of love?" The typical response is that love is a choice, not a feeling. Well, duh! But you can choose to stick with it or abandon it. Abuse it, and the whole world will know it.

Obsessions come and go. So does love. I remember the days when I used to believe that love could outlast anything and fix anything. I was rudely awakened into realizing that love really means nothing, and that love is never enough. The world simply doesn't care whether or not it stays true to its word or not. People are heartless, only out for themselves and completely selfish in all its actions. It has simply been ingrained in the minds of humans since the beginning of time that love does not exist. Obsession is all there is, and to believe in such a thing as "love" is pure folly.

Pessimistic outlook? Well, yeah. But it hasn't been proven to me that there is anything more. I've seen marriages come and go, fail and succeed. But how many marriages are happy marriages? How many marriages that are years old are still as happy as they were on the wedding day? Very few..... maybe the obsession just lasted longer.

Prove to me that love actually exists, and maybe I'll change my mind.

But I promise you you can't.