C’est l’amour

By:Aaditya

Number one: I often find myself beginning my pieces with warnings and disclaimers. But I have no choice. So here goes. 

Disclaimer: this piece has been written by a miffed teenager, a teenager with whom the love gods (or other higher powers) have not been the kindest. And I cannot stress this enough: I’m pretty sure I don’t know what I’m talking about. (TL;DR – I’m perennially single)

Number two: I assume you’d have translated the title by now. If you didn’t have to use the internet, that’s great, honestly. I’m genuinely happy for you.  

With that out of the way, I would like to finally start this piece, with two extremely impactful quotes:

“Love is like oatmeal. It sustains you.” 

“Everything is garbage. You find something you care about, and it’s taken from you – your colleague, your dream job, your mango yogurt. Never love anything. That’s the lesson.”

These quotes are by a wise, unsmiling man named (Captain) Raymond Holt, who describes himself as ‘good at emotion.’ 

I’ve been thinking of what to write in this piece ever since I literally begged my good friend and colleague to allow me to write this ‘Valentine’s Day’ themed piece. I don’t know why I did that. I guess it was just an impulse. It was something that I had to do. I really do hope I’ve done justice with this. 

There are two kinds of love. Simply put, one is garbage, and the other is oatmeal. 

The garbage one is a capitalist scam. This ‘love’ is the entire reason that Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular holidays in the States. It is this kind of ‘love’ that warrants largely cheesy stuff, such as enormous teddy bears that serve no real purpose and just take up space, chocolates with fancy wrappers that taste worse than faeces (no, I don’t know the taste myself, I’ve just taken some creative license and assumed that the taste of bodily-reject is bad), things shaped like hearts that aren’t supposed to look like hearts, or even titling your pieces, that have been written almost entirely  in English, with French words. This love, at the risk of overusing the term, is plain garbage. In no way am I saying that over the top, glamorous love has no place or purpose, it’s just that this form of expression of love shouldn’t become the default. The love that works on manipulation, gaslighting, miscommunication, and other such ‘entities,’ that I needn’t specify. It is this love that is glorified and often fetishised by many books, movies, sitcoms and other popular media. And when I say popular media, I mean POPULAR media. It is this love that has popularised the ideas of  ‘you complete me,’  or ‘I would die without you.’ In many ways, this love talks the talk, but cannot walk the walk. It is this love that brings the expectation that someone who loves you should drop everything they’re doing and just…. Love you.

Enough said about the garbage love. On to the oatmeal one. 

(Another?) mini-disclaimer: I find it very difficult to go ahead with this part of my piece without using some clichés or ‘gooey’ language. So I apologise for that in advance.)

Now, the oatmeal love. It is this love that truly fills your heart and all your insides with warmth. It’s a largely minimalistic love. It includes the love between parents and children, between two best friends, or even very close friends. It is this kind of love that brings a wide grin to your face when you see a particular text the first thing in the morning. This is the love that keeps you running, especially when the days are a little gloomy or tough. This is the love that makes you happy when you talk to someone, even when you’re thousands of miles away from them. This is the love of happiness, contentment, joy and other such ‘entities,’ that I would be happy to enlist, but then we don’t want a very long piece do we? It is this love that brings dedication for something – things other than people. This love really does sustain you. 

Have I been rambling? Perhaps. I do not know for sure. Please do let me know if I was rambling. I’m sorry if I was rambling, I didn’t intend to.

The ending to this piece is going to be just as weird as the beginning. For ABSOLUTELY no reason, I’m going to end this piece with lyrics from an Eminem song (Tragic Endings, ft. Skylar Grey from the album Revival):

In my moments of weakness

I openly admit the shit I wouldn’t normally

Peace out.