Emotions complicate

Love persists. At least for me, it does. It sounds rather benign and even sweet when just uttered like that. It's anything but. In many regards I find that particular emotion to be as pernicious as kudzu. Many have been the hours I have attempted to scour myself entirely of feeling. Many nights have passed while I prayed I would find a way to ruthlessly divest myself of every last echo of love's presence within me.

There are more than a few people who are endlessly delighted my efforts have ultimately come to naught. In the still silence of self-honesty, so am I, even if it does make me uncomfortable.

In bald terms, everyone I have loved, I still love.

I love my first best friend, although he never deserved such loyalty and trust. Trite as has become, he was like a brother to me, before his treacherous nature truly surfaced. The depth of that friendship has long since been surpassed by others, the immediate lust for vengeance given way to an effortless, unconscious hate. But there is still that little piece that continues to platonically hold on despite.

Part of me still loves the first girlfriend I ever lived with. We lived nicely together for close to a year before putting each other through a mutually inflicted hell. Mistakes were made, lines were drawn, the end was bloody and vindictive.

I've been engaged. More than once. It never lasted close enough to ever carry the stone solid weight of rapidly approaching nuptials. In each case, the end of the relationship cut me to the core. In a way, it was worse for not ending acrimony and bitterness. The desire to reach out and heal the breach had no countervailing memory of malicious rejection. We are no longer the people we were then, we've all moved on, but I will carry a measure of love for them to the grave.

But it hasn't been such a sugary cyanide occurrence in my life either.

My heart has refused to relinquish a woman far, far away. Nor have her feelings for me faded. Though it has cost me a steep price in pain, it has also brought me happiness, perspective, and strength.

And most immediately, I've been feverishly, rabidly in love with a woman for almost a decade who loves me back with just as much reckless intensity.

When it all comes together, it's beyond description. Still fiendishly complex even at it's most simple. Guess I'm a sucker for a good Gordian knot.