A few thoughts on love – an unknown story, based on true events

As a confirmed single – yes, I know, to comply with the stereotypical image of a spinster I miss just a cat, but I’ll be fully satisfied with that lazy beast which I left at my parent’s house – when I am down, I keep trying to figure the matter of love out and whether it could be treated as a take-away.

In Poland, as we all know, everything goes awry. If one neighbor keeps complaining that the sky is black, the other one will shout even more loudly that it’s white, and to make matters worse, if we add an upset spinster to that, we will get a pure rainbow of frustration, hardly possible to bear. Of course, you can carry out lively discussions on some topics, making your interlocutors feel confused, which certainly brings you no small amount of personal satisfaction. Exactly, there’s that big head still working! However, in my opinion, there are some issues that can never be called into question. And here I turn to be a rock, you know a concrete one, that cannot be broken.

Let’s imagine this kind of a situation, you find the right man or the right woman. At least it seems so to you during the time of your weakness. Oh, if only you knew how it will end soon! Let’s compare this kind of an event with a visit to a well-known restaurant, serving pun intended ideal burgers (have you ever noticed that they all look pretty the same?). You’re attracted with their smell and visual perfectness in the full sense of the word. Your stomach starts to make its presence known and the fact that it deserves the proverbial little something. Your salivary glands start working like crazy, exactly, since you haven’t even placed your order yet.

So you approach the counter and you already know that this is it. An ideal bread roll with an ideal chop, an ideal slice of cheese, an ideal leaf of lettuce, an ideal tomato, an ideal cucumber and an ideal whatever-you-want-more. Okay, good, you don’t need anything more to reach your full happiness.

With such a carefully selected order, since you won’t satisfy yourself with the second best, you take a seat at the table still remembering the crumbs of love, pardon me, the crumbs of satisfaction with a burger ordered by a different denizen of this ideal venue. So you sit at that table and nothing bothers you at all. Neither this chatter and the stories of the consumers which you’d like not to remember nor the fact that you’ve just stuck to a thick layer of ketchup, generously spread on the seat covered with an imitation of leather. So you see, during the moments of an extreme excitement your tolerance to what you normally dislike or don’t like that much increases maximally, so that the bars go off the scale (yes, yes your fall will be even more painful!)

The state of euphoria continues, you take one bite, the second one, the third one and the umpteenth one. You puff and think that this is it, your happiness will last for ages (as long as your wallet will allow you to pay for that). Offering your love, involvement, you expect to get the same in return. And on the other side, just like with the burger, the layers start to shrink. Ups, you’ve just missed the tomato, then the cucumber, then the golden yellow cheese, the nice chop and you are left with a dry and half-eaten bread roll in your hand. Still remembering how beautiful it was, you cannot believe in what you see in front of you, just the pieces of what you’ve hoped for. A chasm which after the first punch leaves you with a strong stomachache… or maybe it’s just a natural influence of what hasn’t been placed on the label of the product.

And so you slowly come back home, recalling how it was in the past or maybe wasn’t, maybe all these just seemed to be love. You suffer alone, promising yourself to have only a salad and mineral water until the end of your life and even one day longer.

It may be days or even months before you tackle it again. You can barely remember the blurry taste and smell of the ideal (are you really sure of that?) burger in the world. Throwing yourself into your work, everyday duties and calculations you slowly come to a conclusion that there’s no better thing than a familiar sandwich. Always different, never perfect, but always with the ingredients that are placed on your list according to your individual dietetic needs, understand it as your individual preferences.

This is so with modern love. Consumerist to the limits and as short as a visit to one of the fast food restaurants. What’s the point in making a sandwich together if you can get a burger in the blink of an eye and for total pennies on the dollar? Let’s come back to the earlier mentioned rock to brace the text, so that it doesn’t rip at the seams. I got stuck between the tradition and modernity, trying to balance in a way everything works fine. To a good sandwich with lard and a pickle I sometimes add the one which is a bit more fancy with trendy ingredients, but I’ll never make anyone suffer from a so called diarrhea. Why? Because I’ve got a strong spine, oh in this story my stomach would be way more appropriate. I know what I want and I know how I wouldn’t like to feel. And you? What do you serve to others? Mr Burger, the pure perfectness? Or maybe Miss Sandwich, a familiar tranquility? I encourage you to think it over well. What will bring you more on the long run? The first or the second choice? I wish you a pleasant, but a little bit more aware consumption! See ya soon!

See you around!

Yours,

Passion Piece

Photos by: Alora Griffiths, Tetiana Shevereva, Hamed Mohtashami pouya, Aigars Peda on Unsplash