Furious Love

I am currently reading a book called Changing Heaven by Jane Urquehart (turns out she was born in Geradlton, I love that fact). It had different characters from different time periods, and discusses their relationship with the wind, the weather, classic novels and paintings. One of the characters happens to be Emily Bronte, she is a ghost who dwells in the Moors of her past, and a lighter-than-air balloonist who falls to her death and they simply stay in limbo discussing their past lives, dreams and ideas. In one scene, the Balloonist Arianna learns Emily lived her life single and asks that surely she has not lived her life without experiencing love to which Emily responds:
“The trouble with falling in love is that it is really born of a perverse desire to invent the plot of your own life story, to make it episodic. Life should be plot-less – none of this and-the-he, and then-he nonsense. Besides, being in love is really being in a state of rage; it is furious. It is an extended tantrum.”
Of course, I think love is something sweet and wonderful, but I see what she is talking about, when you want love so bad and put your feelings in the wrong places. You are trying to make your life important by having love. Perhaps this person is not the one you should plan your life plot around. Maybe plot is not the right word and she is right when she says life should be plot-less, in the sense that we should not plan our whole lives around one person, one idea of love. That it should just happen and let our lives unfold, as it will. Of course, maybe she had never experienced love in the sense where the person consumes you. Not because you allow them to but because thinking of them pleases you, and being with them is the way you want to spend your time. When you think of them, and be with them you are truly happy. But I think that when you have that person that your life should also feel complete when you are not with them, you can have a night or weekend away and still know that things are the same. Of course as a writer or artists, in general love is easier to portray as a tortured love. Well maybe not easier but more fascinating to their admirers, and having never experienced true love she prefers to talk of tortured love like that in Wuthering Heights. Of course, this is just an author’s opinion on what Emily Bronte might say and my opinion on that fictional passage. Until next time,
The Hopeless Romantic xox