Unrequited Love: Making a bigger fool out of yourself

There are many ways to become a damn fool, I’m sure you can admit, but what better way to become one than through true love? Love is incredibly powerful. It can bring enemies together; act as strong glue between family members, cause acts of extreme kindness, so why not use it to make an even bigger idiot out of yourself than you already are?

Am I critical about love? Well…yeah. I find love to be as embarrassing as sex, and there is nothing as embarrassing as sex, especially when you don’t have the body for it. Then again, who of us does? However, this is not a hub about embarrassing sex, which will be left for further hubs that I’ll write, but instead unrequited love. The kind of love that leaves you painfully unfulfilled and hurt, but you still go back to it as if there is something to be gained, other than more pain and hurt that is.

So, let’s look at the process of making a total fool out of yourself, dragging your heart on the ground and having it stepped on, and living alone, broke, penniless and in a state run SRO. Interested already? Read on. No? Well read on anyway, you might find a reason to thank your lucky stars.

Firstly, I’m a man recovering from homeless for three years, where I lived by my wits on the streets of New York, wearing either found or hand-me-down clothes, eating at soup kitchens and sleeping on the sidewalks or in parks. I was down and out and as low as you can go. My closest friend was a bottle, my blanket was my overcoat.

Waitaminute, I thought that this was an article about unrequited love? It is. I just would like to give you an idea of the package that I have to work with. There is nothing as unrequited as the unlovable. I have none of the frocks or glamour that one would need to garner the attention of the opposite sex, so my being turned down should be academic. There’s no bigger fool than the fool that refuses to take stock in himself. Yet, love makes you do stupid things like that.

Moving on, I write a blog, which I have been doing all during my living on the streets, I have been the subject of a radio show of WNPR, I have been a poet in the New York Poetry for as long as I have been homeless. My brother and I have been known as the homeless poets.

On a bright and sunny day, as I was doing my stint in the Male Homeless Shelter system, a fine woman of sorts blessed me by contacting me through email and we started correspondence. We found out that we had much in common and by some miracle, she happened to be in New York City and we arranged for a meeting. Upon meeting her, I was smitten, not so much by her stunning looks, because she was quite average, but rather she was on Helluvah woman. Her outstanding qualities were captivating and I was star struck. I had to stay in contact with her.

Here is where the foolishness comes in. I had lost sight of whom and what I was and what I had to offer this fiercely intelligent woman. So, what’s the first thing that a lover fool tries to do when courting a woman…well he tries his hand at poetry. First reading it, and then writing it. In my case, since I am already a poet with several self-published books under my belt, a dubious honor, this came naturally to me. I found myself busy in writing love poems to this woman. Deeply felt poems that would cause my heart to ache when writing them, and I would send them off to her on a daily basis along with letters interested in her life, her day, her in specific.

Her response to me was warm and caring, but not loving. In fact, I was warned by her early on not to form any romantic attachments. But like I said, this is an article, not about succeeding in love, but in how to make damn fool out of yourself through unrequited love. There is no better basis than this, to be warned that your affections will be spurned long before building them up in a fantasy world of the mind. Yet I went along and did so anyway, thinking that love will conquer all. Little did I know that love also has the power to turn event he bravest and best men into raving fools.

Raving, yes, frothing at the mouth. Poetry allows you this avenue, because you can rant and rave and whine and bitch and moan. You can lay all of your emotions out there on a Persian rug of love to be trampled on. This I did, actually believing that I had something to offer her.

My circumstances soon changed. I left the shelter system, and was moved into Transitional Housing, which is temporary living in a single room, sharing a bathroom. I took this to mean that my status in the world was moving up, and getting better. Little did I realize that it was still the bottom rung of the social ladder. Still, I believed this to be an improvement on a scale that would garner Her attention.

My newfound status went unnoticed, although my poems were not. She found a love of my poems, which I mistook as a love for me. My love letters grew more and more passionate, more and more self-revealing. I took my heart out and stitched it to my sleeve. I poured tears of pain and sorrow and longing on the electronic pages of my missives in a desperate attempt to catch her love. I wanted to win Her, to one day embrace Her, Her visage constantly before my eyes.

Still, this would never be the case. I would never arise to nothing but the pitiable. I would never succeed at anything but amassing an oeuvre of letters and poetry that would boggle the mind. I did not see the uselessness of my actions, I didn’t see how my actions, my letters, my poetry was doing little more than entertaining her. There is nothing bad that I can say about this special lady, she did what she was supposed to. Let a man know early on and quickly that she was not attracted to him, for reasons that were obvious.

But foolishness prevailed in the heart of this man. I did not run out of steam for a year and at a certain point I realized that I did generate a body of work that would be a shame to be wasted if lost. I took my fantasies and published them in a Blurb book to her, and I guess to everyone who would like a primer how to write love poems that will take you absolutely nowhere in the raging rivers of love.

We are still close friends, and if every man fears the ‘friends’ penalty box, here’s a good way to end up in one. Here’s a good way to find yourself in the colder side of love, which is to plant yourself there firmly to begin with, and then burning there, hoping to warm the tundra of her heart. Only to fail in the long run. Who do you blame for this other than yourself?

I am still alone, and this Thanksgiving, I spend it eating Spam Sandwiches, and Kool-Aid without sugar. I’ll pour myself a cup of coffee in a little while and sit down in front of my laptop which has a picture of Her as my wallpaper, and images of her as my screensaver. I’ll pen another love letter to her today, simply because I want to, I feel the fire in the belly and have to unload my heart again. Yes, a heart filled with love for Her. I didn’t tell you that there was an antidote to this sickness. There probably isn’t. You’ll probably feel some measure of love for the rest of your life for this person, so forget it trying to free yourself of these tangled emotions. You are hooked, and hooked good.

I’ll also write her a few love poems today. I have reason to feel thankful today. Thankful that I have met Her, and she gave me purpose in this life. The truth of this is that because of keeping my focus on her, being the true loverfool, I did not dwell on my lowered status in life, whining and crying about my lot. I moved ever forward, focused on the future and not on the miserable present, while living in the streets, in the shelter system, and now through transitional housing. I’m not miserable about my life because I have love in it. I am given a unique gift in getting up in the morning, thankful for another day to love Her.

I didn’t say that there wasn’t an upside to unrequited love; I just said that the downside was in NOT receiving the love that you really need from the one you really want.