Love hurts.

Sometimes love hurts, and sometimes maybe too much and also for very long. Those who have truly loved know of this hurt. Everyone learns it sometime in their lives, love comes with some accompanying pain. The hurt and pain are the relative costs that are due if one is to experience love.

He was no stranger to her temper. To say that she was a loose canon if one rubbed her the wrong way was not an understatement. That was part of her attraction for him from the very early on. The feisty and fiery character of hers was passionate; she loved life to the full, and lived the life on the very edge in order that she could feel love.

The reason for the hurt and pain is simple: love needs passion to survive, and since passion is the fire that lights up our souls it can only burn bright if it feeds itself on the juices of our lives. That is why true love hurts so much, sooner or later love always extracts its costs. Love is never free, it fools us to think that it is but the price is often real high.

Their argument had started well before they had reached the milonga. It was like a storm brewing and it suddenly flared up once they got there.

He said "It is all in the past! "We have always been just friends, you can not possibly think there has ever been anything else more to it! How can you?.... this is really silly now."

She just looked away and stared into a place that was not clearly there at all. She was trying to look for something that was residing perhaps beyond the world of their anger and argument, or something that was not definable by any shapes or colours. She tried to look for something that she could remember fondly, something that still belonged to not too distant past and was not obscured. She searched for an image that was clear and bright, dependable, joyful, real, and more than anything else: comforting.

Her rage would not let her. She felt she needed her rage on her side. She did not want to lose herself to the simplicity of just wanting the end of what had started her feelings boiling over like this.

She did not and could not understand how and why She loved him so deeply. She only knew that she felt so happy to be with him, near and next to him. There was no wonder therfore that She hated these moments that led to their inevitable shift away from each other. The emotional and physical distance that followed these angry arguments made her weak in her determination to get her points across. This she could not stand about herself.

She hoped he could say something more, something that was more reassuring. She wanted to hear him say words that could give her all the ammunition she needed to fight his battle for him in her mind. She wished so much that he could help her win the argument for him both in her heart and her mind. Only if he had, anything was better than nothing at all, it would have calmed her down. But so typical of him, he did not say a word, this made her even more annoyed with him. With such low levels of emotional inteligence, to her he was a lost poppy, he looked weak. She had loved him to be strong for her and at times like this he never was.

She had left her loneliness behind since she had met him. She was never aloof or shy but after they had met she had become a complete bundle of laugh and joy.

"So why does it hurt so much?" she asked herself quietly once more. "I have loved and been in love in the past too, it is not as if this is my very first time feeling that I am being in love, so why am I so different this time? Why had I never felt such terrible anger before?" and the thoughts continued bouncing around in her mind.

She remembered herself and her sincerity if she ever spoke the words "I love you" in her past. She had meant the statement every time, it was not a casual sentence for her to just say it to someone because it felt she should, never, she had never doubted her true love when she was in love. "How come love was so strangely different this time?", she had no answer.
This love was consuming, it was distracting, it was like being mad and seeing the thrill in heights of such madness, and worse of all she was enjoying its madness incessantly. This frightened her but she would not admit to it - ever.

Standing on the edge of a very tall cliff, overlooking the ocean waves below, there is a beckoning that is not asking you to jump but to lean simply forward: forever more, and a little further out. The quest becomes wanting to watch the glory of those mesmerising ocean waves. The objective becomes being curious and to learn how tall the waves actually are. Watching then is not enough, it will transpire itself in wanting to desperately test the strength of the crashing waves against the cliffs below. Just below and ahead of where we can stand and be safe if we remain still.

"That is how we fall" she said to herself, "maybe it is for the best if we take some steps back".
Her mind was constantly spinning some new threads of thought. How could she fight the urge not to lean further into this ocean? Were her fights with him her attempts to pull them back from the edge? To save herself and to stop herself being consumed forever more she needed to find herself some distraction.

He flipped the wipers' sticker into a faster mode. The rain was so heavy by now. He hoped that this change of wipers' speed would help to clear the windscreen better, more rapidly, enough to allow him better vision of the road ahead. He was becoming gradually more and more worked up and angry with all these other drivers who despite the heavy rain were not slowing down at all.

He was being tail-gated by an idiot white van driver for the last two miles or so. The uneasiness of being stuck between a lorry in front of his car and this van behind him was making him very nervous. With such poor visibility around him,he felt it was more dangerous to remain sandwiched between these two specially on this narrow stretch of the M11 between Cambridge and London.

Eventually out of total frustration and true sense of danger threatening them, he took a chance, pulled out with all the speed that his car could offer him, he overtook the lorry. His heart was in his mouth by the time he had succeeded. He had sensed the lack of friction and complete loss of control when his tyres and the motorway's tarmac lost touch. It was over within a few short seconds. His heart was still beating very fast. He was now driving ahead of the lorry and the van, and the road in front of his headlights was clear. Without any splashes washing over his windscreens he was having a much better visibility of the road ahead. This pleased him. There was a sense of childish heroism that visited his ego at that moment. His logic however knew better, it was a foolish act that could have ended in a total disaster. He was very lucky to have got away with it .

Still recovering and putting himself together after his unsafe and dangerous manoeuvre, with a guilty and pale face he looked across at her. He was fully expecting to be told off. It unsettled him that she was not even looking at him. She just continued to stare out.

He said "I am sorry, I was really stupid back there I know, I did not mean to upset you...but I didn't know what else to do...I am not even sure if I thought it properly through, I just didn't think...I should have explained before I did anything but...sorry 'love'". He was now a bit more in shock of the possible consequences of his actions on her life too. This embarrased him and his face said it all.

After these scentenses he shut up. He continued to carefully study the road and drive while taking glances at her wanting to see if her reaction required him to say more.

She was unsure how to interpret his apology. She heard him, he sounded sincere and genuine in his apology. She did not have the heart or much desire to ask him to explain why he had managed to upset and spoiled her milonga this evening. She decided he looked guilty enough to cut him off some slack. She had decided to take some steps back and let it be.

He looked across once again, and once more quietly said "Sorry love, didn't mean to...". "I know,...let's just forget about it" she said.

He could see her gently smiling, he joined her. He switched on the music, listening to some loving tangos they were both smiling as they continued their journey.

(Milongacat is back!)