THE POWER OF LOVE

“She said she loved me but when she left she took the TV, the bed, and the VCR. Guess when we were at home and she said, I love you, I love you, I love you. I must have been standing in front of the TV, the bed, or the VCR. So like an idiot, I believed her. I love you, you big 19 incher...Thanks honey. It’s what she can’t have. Now the Toshiba’s gone. What am I going to do? Get bitter?......” - Bill Hicks

Something was wrong.

The first time something wrong happened was Thursday February 4th 2000.

I came back from work to find my partner of three years was packing her bags and leaving me whilst I was at work.

As my hands grasped the door and found it locked, a click went off inside my head. I wondered. Maybe she’s left me. But she wouldn’t do that. Even she’s not that cruel. Even after weeks of the emotional cold-shoulder, after weeks of emotionless, loveless co-existence, even she wouldn’t sink that low. A frozen existence I was trying to fight. Every night I attempted to give affection and love, to compensate from the withdrawal that was being forced upon me, to try and show that there was still magic and beauty in us. But I didn’t think she would leave. I didn’t think that she didn’t want magic and beauty.

Boy, is my finger not on the pulse. People will leave as soon as they think it suits them : commitment and loyalty are so outdated.

Another, different Thursday the 4th I came back from work to find my wife actually had left me whilst I was at work. Packed up all the things she could fit into a car and driven away. I’d even taken money out of the bank to pay into the joint account so that we could afford to pay the bills as I was the only person earning any money.

So something, somewhere had gone wrong.

“THAT’S NO WAY TO TREAT A FRIEND”

Previously the door had always been open. Being unemployed for extended periods - and this being a considerable burden on already overstretched finances - I had kind of got used to someone being there when I returned from my own work. It wasn’t really a old-fashioned marriage, but it was one sense : the man was to be the sole breadwinner.

She left me a sofa, a desk, a bed, a chest of drawers, and two fridges : whatever couldn’t fit in the car. Forgive me for not appearing grateful for that , but I thought that when you loved someone you wanted what was best for them. Because what was best for them was best for the both of us. I must have been standing in front of the TV, VCR, and most of my movies whenever she said “I love you” - because she took those with her. (thanks Bill, I owe you)

I lost my best friend. For 402 nights out of the past 404, the last face I’d seen every night, the first every morning, was my best friend, my lover, my wife. And one day whilst I was at work, she simply vanished. As if she had been abducted by aliens.

It’s no way to treat a friend. It’s not about the cruelty of women or the evils of love. This is about the betrayal of a friendship. You can’t claim to have ever loved anyone, if you’re prepared to treat them so disgracefully. The only love there could ever have been was for the self.

Naturally you always think of the self. But to view the world in such a fashion that other people are merely objects and tools to be used, manipulated, and then disposed of isn’t ethical. It’s more a case of a lack of empathy, and having a lack of empathy is a sign of a psychopathic mindset.

It’s not some all women are evil rant. It’s not some love is the slug ramble. This is about betrayal. Betrayal of a friendship, the abuse of trust, the price of love. We all pay for sex in the end. Some people perform a transaction exchange of money for love. They’re called prostitutes. The rest of us pay in other, less obvious, more expensive ways.

In takeaways and cinema tickets. In pints, in lost, pointless tears, in the curved logic of anger, in joint accounts, in unpaid bills, in late nights where lovers tear each other to pieces based upon something that might or might not have been said or meant, in something that will not, ultimately matter anyway.

Someone had lost sight of what was important in all the bullshit that surrounded us.

When your lover abandons you, and fails the relationship, its not the case that you can walk away from the car crash. If you‘re in the driving seat with your wife, and say, one person wants to crash the car and you don‘t, it only needs for the destructive party to succeed once. For those of us who try to behave more sensibly, you need to succeed every time. It has always been easier to destroy than to create, and to create takes considerably more talent.

THE STRANGER IN MY BED

“........You can‘t get bitter man. Just because someone tells you they love you, and then they leave. You gotta think there‘s a reason. You‘ve gotta find a bright side. You‘ve gotta move on after they leave.... on the bright side you know what? I’m glad she left. It helped my career. Because I’m driven now. I’m driven by a fantasy”. - Bill Hicks

It’s only when someone you thought you knew does something that is enormously removed from behaviour you judge as acceptable that you realise how much time we can spend with someone yet know so little about them. Someone who in every way resembles a human being on the exterior, but whose moral base is so far removed from anything that could be considered to be considerate or empathetic that they aren’t someone you want to know.

Pathetic more like. To think that whatever happens to other people as a consequence of your actions is no importance. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Thinking like that indicates that you are divorced from your emotions. Unaware of your feelings. Unfeeling. Unthinking. A machine. An animal. Empathy is the thing that separates man from the animals. The thing that civilises us. That we’re not trying to fuck each other over for a small advantage. And if that’s what you’re trying to do - to gain some small advantage and by doing so inflict pain and suffering on others, you’re no better than an animal. And if you have consideration for other people, then by and large, you are demonstrating sociopathic tendancies.

It had happened to me. A cliche had been forced onto me : and I was a BBC 2 Sitcom writers dream. A twenty-something divorcee trying to rebuild his life. Tuesdays, 9.30. You might find it in the Spring Schedule.

I read Motley Crue’s The Dirt, and in it, the wife of one of the band members (whose name thankfully, I have either forgotten or blanked out in terror) completely strips his house of everything. Of the carpets, the cutlery, all the money in the bank account, every last thing he owned. Every last piece of furniture. Even the spoons. Gone. Back to a ghost house.

I never thought I’d feel that way. Raped. Powerless. Fucked over by love

THE PRICE OF ESCAPE

Normally its the abandoned one who finds that they have to be strong because of others weakness. Who finds that they have carry not just the weight of loneliness, the weight of betrayal, the weight of starting again, but also have to carry the costs. Pay the price of other people’s mistakes. Pay for other people’s irresponsibility.

Two people struggling and failing to pay the bills became one person struggling and failing to pay the bills. Became one person betrayed. Because someone has to pay. And take it from me, the authorities really don’t give a fuck as long as someone - anyone - pays.

She has her side. Of course. The one that will tell you about how I subjected her to emotional and physical abuse. If your definition of physical abuse is forcibly removing someone off you when they’re drunk and abusive then I’m guilty. And if emotional abuse is asking someone to go out and get a job, then I’m guilty. But I don’t think I was the one dishing out the abuse there.

But she asked me once after the split, to examine why she left, to try and exonerate herself. I had to look at why she left. And the conclusions I draw are not based upon my errors and my mistakes. The only mistake I made was getting married in the first place.

The reason she left, so far as I can ascertain, is that I’d ceased to be an attractive option : the gold in the mine was running out.

Everything else is just bullshit and an excuse. A retrospective, improvised attempt to justify completely inconsiderate behaviour. And apparently, I, by wanting to co-operate and communicate had chosen “the hard way” of splitting up.

And the easy way is by just running out when someone’s back is turned, and leaving them with thousands of pound of bills. When its in joint names, both people are responsible. However, when one takes off and leave the other to carry all the responsibilities, it isn’t just betrayal. It’s fraud. It’s theft. I’ve got to write cheques that someone else has already cashed.

I’ve been stolen from. Ripped off for thousands and thousands and thousand of pounds. And the law won’t lift a finger to help.

When someone neglects their responsibilities someone, somewhere has to carry the weight. They make it easier for themselves, by making it harder on you - like the cowards and the juveniles they are.

EMOTIONAL COWARDICE

The day she left me I think knew exactly where she went. But I couldn’t prove it. But I wasn’t going to track her down. No point. Besides. She’d gone to another man - the same one who came the day after with a big white van and helped her take even more of my belongings. And that kind of makes me feel, well, better. It kind of indicates to me that for all her groundless accusations that I was having an affair throughout the duration of my marriage, that she was the guilty party there.

Not that I’m bitter - just angry that people still have the inhumanity to treat other people so cruelly. Has mankind learnt nothing and is all we are just animals with very advanced toys? Instead of sticks and stones, we use joint bank accounts, pension plans, electricity and gas bills, and what has mankind achieved? Nothing. Some of us are still just cruel animals using complex weapons instead of blunt ones.

THE ESSENCE OF BETRAYAL

Love is two people working together, not one working against the other.

At least she didn’t leave me on a Friday, and ruin my weekend. No. My weekend was ruined already. Now it’s as if she never even existed. The Wedding Photographs are living in a unopened box in a loft somewhere - but not at my house. For someone who didn‘t want to be married , she did a remarkably good impersonation of someone who wanted to be. She even kept all the wedding photos. And the ring. And everything.

I don’t even know what part of the country she’s living in. It’s as in, some bizarre Orwellian gesture, she made herself an Unperson. And pretends that I don’t even exist. Apart from when the bills need to be paid : at that point and that point only am I of any use.

But I can barely pay my own bills, let alone months of accumulated, unpaid bills in someone else’s name. The essence of betrayal is that I have, in some way, been used. The glory of love was a mask worn by the need for a benefactor to pay the bills. I paid her rent. Sounds like a song.

Is it worth it? Is it worth trusting people, hoping for the glory of love, the beauty of the best things the world can be provide, and risk losing your very belief system?

No, it isn’t actually. When you believe that people are in essence good people and that somewhere, out there, is a person who will not betray you - and that essential belief is the core of your soul. That love is the greatest thing in the world, the thing that provides beauty and hope in a world that is smothered in concrete and work. That makes all the ugliness of suburbia somehow worth it. Without that, life is almost meaningless : without direction, without beauty.

Love. Empathy for others. Feeling. Those are the things that prevent us from being mere animals. People who love and forsake their own feelings for those of others are evolved. They are not mere creatures that fight over scraps of meat and use others only to further our own ends.

As a whole, man knows that deep down, the whole is far in excess of the sum of the parts. And so, we, as a whole, we cling to the belief in love. The hope that our own love can in some small way can change the world.

Without it, we are divided. Easier to conquer. People who see people only as objects to be used and abused are lacking in those qualities we know as human. They aren’t civilised. Instead, they’re dinosaurs. Animals trapped in human bodies.

THE POWER OF LOVE

“...A fantasy that one day this girl who I loved more than anything in the world - and she said she loved me - then left, that one day she’s going to be living somewhere, in a trailer park, living with this ex-welder, 600 pounds, fur all over his back, drinks beer, farts, belches, beats the kids, watches the Dukes Of Hazzard every night -and has to have it explained to him. “ - Bill Hicks

When you’re in love the world can be a beautiful place.

Every morning when you awake, you don’t just wake up. It’s the first step on a journey into a new world. And the first face that you see isn’t yours, staring confused and red-eyed into a mirror, rushing for a train. The first face you see in the morning is your best friend. Your lover. The person who you love. The person who loves you. The person you would leap unthinkingly, through sheer instinct, in front of a speeding bullet, car, or UFO, for.

Love is the power to believe in the power of human kindness to transform this world into a beautiful place.

It sounds cliched, but even the bad days have a good thing - because somehow whatever you’re being put through, you’re not alone - there’s someone else you can share it with. That sense of companionship. Not that you want to put anyone else through the bad times - but there’s someone whose strength can help pull you through. Someone who will help you. Someone you will help if ever they needed it.

NO FEELINGS

For the world can be cruel without reason. And it frequently is. The small slights and insults the world passes on we bear. Not because we want to, but because there is no choice. From the seemingly meaningless slights of the commuter rush-hour, inserted into a train packed with the same strangers you see everyday. To the financial sodomy of credit cards and the interest rates that cripple us through poverty. From the aspirations of something as seemingly impossible yet humble as owning your own house. To the cruelty of others who do not understand that every action has a reaction.

And when they make it easier on themselves, they make it harder on you. The pain doesn’t go away. It just moves onto somewhere, or more likely, someone else. And those people have to be strong to bear the brunt of your weakness. But that’s OK. Other people don’t matter. They don’t have feelings. So they’re just like you. They are objects to be bled dry and discarded when they are no longer of use.

Love is the most beautiful thing in the world - when two people unite, they become more than the sum of the parts. When two people divide love is the cruellest weapon in the world. For love, love is the thing that happens when what someone else wants is more important than their own desires. When you put someone else in front on yourself. When your cynicism, your fear, your mistrust of others, your defences fall and you allow someone else in, in the belief that they too are a decent person, they too believe the things you do, they too believe that betraying someone’s trust and hurting them is the lowest thing in the world you can do. To stick the knife in when you open your chest and lower your defences is the most cowardly form of attack. Stabbing someone in the back.

People who do that, people who just walk out on you and steal your belongings whilst you are out at work - they’re thieves. Common burglars with a set of housekeys. Morally bankrupt and irresponsible. That’s not to say that they don’t believe what they are doing is right. But when someone thinks that kind of behaviour is ‘right’, I find it somewhat disturbing. What else might they see as ‘the right thing to do’?

It’s just they somehow think they can just walk out on a marriage or a relationship, lock the door, walk away, and let someone else pick up the pieces. And let someone else take all the responsibility for their actions. And foot the bill.

LOVE IS A WEAPON

Behaviour like that lies in a perception that is somewhat removed from reality. People are strange, when you’re a stranger. And because people are strange, they see things differently. One set of events can be interpreted in a manner that is seriously deviant from both fact and intention. Innocuous comments can be twisted and perverted by a hidden agenda so that they no longer resemble anything that fell out of your mouth.

With such an unusual and inaccurate perspective, it’s not impossible for the person you loved, the person you trusted, the person you thought had morals, to shift allegiances and moral viewpoints to such an unfeeling, inconsiderate state that they think that packing up their stuff and driving away whilst you’re at work is a good thing to do. The same person who might now, for example, be telling everyone they owe thousands of pounds to, that the only way they’ll get any money is to hound the ex-husband they just abandoned whose holding a clutch of unpaid bills and has no money to pay them.

Being part of a couple means for better for worse, for richer for poorer, for sickness and in health. It doesn’t mean that you get off the gravy train when someone else can’t afford to pay for you to sit at home all day whilst they’re out at work. It doesn’t mean that. Being part of a couple means two people working together for the great good. Not one feeding off the other until he’s no longer useful and then going off to seek a new host.

You might be able to do that. But that doesn’t mean you should. And it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to get away with it.

TAINTED LOVE

“....She‘s going to have nine little kids with rickets, bring home dead animals from the side of the road for them to eat at night, dirt in their hair, birds in their face, and rats laying eggs in their ears every night...” - Bill Hicks

But love is tainted by the knowledge that when you trust, you actually believe what people are saying. And that means that if the things they say are not true, they can try to control you and abuse you. That’s emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is not asking someone to go out and get a job because you can’t afford to pay the bills on one income. Emotional abuse is deliberately absolving your responsibilities and getting someone else to pick up the tab.

Someone who becomes your family, your lover, you friend, your companion, your north and south, your east and west, your rock and your air, your day and your night, your light and your darkness, simply becomes your darkness. Becomes the reason you can’t make ends meet. Becomes a memory. Becomes the reason you sit in a single room, eating barely, unable to afford to see your friends and gain emotional support in this time of betrayal. Becomes the reason Court Summons land on your door. Becomes the biggest mistake you made. Becomes the reason why you cannot trust people. Because trusting someone has cost you more money than you could imagine. Thousands, and thousands, and thousands of pounds. Has cost you emotionally.

Every morning I wake up in the same bed my wife used to sleep in, in the same room, surrounded by the same things. I go to the same job. In the meantime the bills pile up in joint names, and the woman who was once my best friend pretends I don’t exist. And that the bills in her name aren’t hers. Whilst the only copies of hundreds of the wedding photos sit unloved and unused in her mothers attic.

Now that’s the definition of emotional abuse.

THE GREATEST THING.

That’s why I can’t believe in the power of love to do anything but destroy. That’s why I can’t trust. I believe in love as a great healer. I believe in love as the most beautiful thing in the world. Don’t try to spoil that gift for anyone else through immaturity and selfishness.

But love is also the greatest weapon ever invented. Use your kisses wisely. Do not turn them into shots over the parapet. Do not use your love as a way of exploiting others trust for your own end. Do not pervert the greatest gift that we as human beings can ever bestow. It degrades and cheapens you. It hurts and abuses others.

Love’s the greatest thing. It has a potential beyond anything else in the world. It can be the greatest weapon. The greatest pain. The greatest joy. The greatest thing in the world. It is only in the hands of the flawed ugly human spirit that it can become a weapon of destructive power. Use your kisses wisely and accept the responsibility of love. It’s a greater responsibility than anything else in the world.