Love with an Expiration Date?

A Graveyard mourner, photographer unknown

I cannot wrap my head, or heart, around it, and so perhaps that is why it stings my consciousness — how can anyone stand the pain of a love not meant to last, or dare go into a relationship only meant to last for a short while? Some say ‘better to have loved or not at all’ and all the better for the loss of it, because at least there was a love to it, eh? But isn’t that all bullshit when there really is no reason for the loss to begin with?!

Why plan to put an expiration date on love at all when there is no reason for forcing an end, especially right as love is going well, especially when love is already leading to so many other shared experiences between lovers who are still alive, young, happy, and so well off together? No death is wedging an eternal distance between them. Nor illness severing their bodies apart. There no need to cease sexual concourse for lack of interest and energy. The blessings of the Gods be upon those whom togetherness has been bestowed, for there are those of us who suffer day upon night for years in the Kingdom of Severance. What know They — the ones who cheer frequent one night lays — of true romance, the kind that brings comfort to the heart and soul after the long day’s hurt spent in heaviest loneliness? Who more deserves love — the rake on the move seeking a woman in every town, or the woman lost in the woods seeking family and home?

The answer: They All.

And there shall not be an expiration date on any love. No excuses.

I do not care for men with their petty excuses for romance when offered to women they seem to respect for a short while, or for only as long as they give of their bodies. Friendship with those men only seems to last as long as the sexual interest, too. The moment ends when love’s erection is nothing but that — the erection — and the expiration date on that is only as good as a woman’s looks, worth as much as she gives, and revived as often as she can please him. Am I bitter? No, angry. Because men lie. Some tell you they love you only as long as you keep giving them blow jobs (only for one example), and then they stop when you want friendship in return, turning any once joyful sexual encounter into ‘turning you into their whore encounter’ and that writes a coupon for ten times the disrespect for one ounce of love.  And before you can say “why did you go there in the first place if you didn’t want to be considered a ‘ho?” I’ll tell you I was promised quite often in many a relationship a much more respectful relationship (not to mention reciprocation).  Not all men commit such crimes, and many more who do try to make up for their sins against women, and yet foul up when it comes to friendship when they suspect we love them, not for who they want us to think they are, but for when we care about them despite their flaws and know them for who they really are.

Suddenly, the closeness ends. A guy friend turns me away.  Oh, no, she no longer worships me… or, no, she does worship me!  Don’t love me!  No one love me!  Only *do* me!  Don’t discover the man behind the penis!  Runaway or I’ll run you through!  Or at least that’s what I’d imagine him screaming as he does flee.  It has happened several times in my friendships with men, especially ones who like to keep their friends at a distance and their ex-girlfriends closest.  Why do I get the break-up the ex-girlfriends should get, not the other way around?  I suppose there is no room for other kinds of love in one man’s life.  Cop outs like there’s not enough time really mean he’s not interested because I’m not fuckable.  I’m not stupid.  Men lie in many different ways, especially the ones who vow the hardest not to.  And if this lady doth protest, cry, panic, and get depressed?  His other women pals protect him and call me enemy, but all of us come to the same delusion, all of us fall at the edge of the hero’s blade, the one we blindly believed in and still wish I could.

With a clean cut the man deems quick enough to deal a healthy blow sure to end my love that will end his suffering — the death-dealing blow to sever his heart from mine on the date he has written with the tip of his sword — the expiration date only he knew, and never was I prepared for, each time the 27th of every month comes, I bleed again, and it never yet kills,  even when he’s the one who walks, wins, lives…?

He was my hero.  But what they don’t tell you in the epic stories is that heroes are certain death for those who love them and stay true.  Eventually they will be as short-lived as their love, yet who’s to stay that is the way it is meant to be?  Who are you or I to write the rules?  It feels a whole lot unfair.

Heroes are Terrorists.  Idealists with bombs that go off in whispers and kisses.  Don’t believe in Them.

Don’t trust Those whose love comes with expiration dates.

Am I bumming you out?  Think I’m too harsh?  You bet I am.  But you know what?  The fire of it heals.  It’s like Kali.  It has me picking up my own sword.  Got me cutting the air, cutting off what hurts, dancing with swords.  Feeling like my own woman again.  Proving to myself my love matters.  That no man will ever again try to destroy me like this, oh, no, not without a fight.

My love has no expiration.  I’ll duel you for it.  And win.