By Sophie Humbert
The gravelly hum of Marc Bolan’s voice slices through the thick hazy fog which lingers in my mind.
Love is grand, won’t you hold my hand…
How tragic to be mocked by my cd player.
As I approach my 20s, I can’t help but feel panicked over the fact that I have never experienced romantic love.
After all, the fantastical nature of a heartbreak born from a dwindling love is like a writer’s ultimate fuel.
I guess I owe this shitty feeling to the expectations set by movies about teen romance, high school sweethearts, young love, and all the rest.
But the biggest culprit, the nastiest taunt of all, is music.
Gut-wrenching songs of heartbreak, about having loved someone who has died, or cheated, or moved away. Line after line about drowning their sorrows in red wine or Sylvia Plath, and talking about how they will get over this feeling one day, but until then, they will continue to take any chance to discuss the love they lost with anyone who will listen.
Why do I crave this feeling? Why do I crave the angsty sadness prompted by a broken heart? It certainly fuels the best kind of creative works, that’s for sure. Take Jeff Buckley and his song Last Goodbye for example:
Kiss me out of desire, baby, not consolation.
There is no way he wrote that song, especially that line, without having actually experienced a kind of love where kisses became hollow expressions of comfort rather than of love or lust.
An upsetting notion, but it is better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all.
A few months after turning 18, I wrote a little paragraph in my notes app about my take on love, and although the paragraph was completely convoluted, the sentiment was there.
I wrote about how love was essentially the purpose of life. This kind of cliche statement rattles my career-driven brain, making my inner cynic quiver with disgust; but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Any time we are reminded of life’s fleeting nature or our own mortality, and can strip back the frivolous layers caked on our existence, we are left with a small child who just wants to run home and hug her loved ones. Love is an intangible thing, based upon a visceral feeling, which doesn’t need to be specifically taught or invented, but it’s always been there, waiting and begging to be felt.
That being said, distorted perceptions of love can certainly present themselves, but once shown what a healthy kind of love looks like, we can open a fresh set of eyes and recognise true love as something beautiful and worth craving, that we can’t believe we ever misattributed.
Definitions of love can change and evolve over time, and there are moments in our lives where we will sit and sigh, thinking, “so this is what true love feels like.” When you are 14-years-old and you have the biggest, most crippling schoolyard crush, and you think the feeling will never pass, until you finally get into your first relationship and you think you could never be more infatuated with a person, until you meet the someone you want to spend your life with, and then just as the strings tying your heart into place begin to wear thin, they fall victim to the raucous tugs and cries of your first child, and then your second child, until your life becomes a scrapbook filled with the multitude of ways in which you have loved and can love another person.
In the 2004 film sequel Before Sunset, Celine discusses her cynical view on love and romance, which deeply contrasts her wistful and romantic demeanour in the first film. However, this outer shell plagued with disdain is simply her way of coping with the fact that she has never had an experience which lived up to the one night of romance she spent with Jesse, nine years prior.
I can relate to most of what Celine says about being cynical as a means of protecting oneself, because as someone who dreams up fantastical romantic scenarios before bed, I certainly get bitter when discussing the topic of love.
Bitterness aside, I certainly have experienced many kinds of love and bear witness to the myriads of places it manifests itself.
I can feel it each time I look at my sister when she’s talking about how much she loves the new screenplay concept she’s brainstorming, or my mum when she calls me to make sure I’m okay in the 48 hours we’ve been apart, or my dad when he’s singing in the kitchen, or my friends when they are sitting in my room and telling me really stupid jokes, or when we go out to eat and talk a little too loud about things we probably shouldn’t.
Or when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, humming along to my favourite track on an album I forgot that I loved, so much.
Sophie Humbert is from the Gold Coast and a second year QUT student studying a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism). Her passions are music journalism and creative writing, especially poetry. She is also fascinated by feminist film theory, involving horror (yes, incredibly niche). She loves nothing more than fueling her creativity through music and film. Her Spotify is her own personal poetry book, with each playlist catering to a niche moment in her life which only she can truly understand.
