The Best Loves Are Those Unrequited

The things we love often don't love us back.

To be more precise: the things we love often cannot love us back. 

Your favorite painting in your favorite museum, the short poem you have read obsessively on your mass printed page, the weather that most makes you want to spend the day outside- these cannot love you. Your coffee mug with the perfectly placed chip that your grandma gave you, the sound that comes out when your favorite person laughs, the smell of salt water and sunscreen- all of the things that fill your heart with a fire only love can light. These things cannot love you.

​Many times, there is a person that has given us this thing to love, and we can love this person. They may even love us, too- but the melody of their uneven, and wonderful laugh feels no affection as it floats through the air between. It does not hope you get home safe, despite the sentiment coming from the same source. The poem you have read a thousand times will never have a heart that swells when you're near. The clay coffee mug you refuse to leave behind does not smile when it thinks of you, because it cannot think of you. Although, if this silly, but loved little cup could feel a feeling or two, I bet it would be pretty fond of you.

The care we tend to give the things which cannot feel affection for us often goes beyond that which we give those who can. It is selfless to protect something that does not care for you. To be willing to sacrifice a part of yourself, sometimes small and other times big, to keep a thoughtless thing alive sounds bizarre, but feels easy.

Even though these things may not love, they give the sensation of such. The glorified, all-consuming experience of joy, sorrow, pleasure, confusion. This is what these things give in return. Perhaps, this is how they thank us. They give us the chance to indulge in this universally sought feeling. To be able to love something, without the risk that of not being loved back, or the love suddenly being lost, is an experience like no other. It grants the ultimate freedom to feel. It eliminates the fear of falling. It lets you love recklessly. It breaks down any barriers stopping you from falling, and lets you embrace the fall wholeheartedly, instead.

To love a person is vulnerability personified.

The book by your bedside will not scream at you for misplacing it. The letter that your best friend wrote will never take back its kindness, and appreciation- though your best friend may. The paper, and its inked words, will forever love you. Even if she does not. The couch that reminds you of your first kiss will never spend a week in the hospital, only to never leave. These things cannot love us back- but they can save us when we have lost love. They can remind us that we have had it. They can remind us how to feel it.

There is a special kind of salvation to be found in the escapism of loving the inanimate.

It is the only time we willingly embrace unrequited love. We long for it. These one sided feelings protect from the pain that can come with reciprocation- both failed and successful. In the moments you are not ready to face the risk of loving, or being loved by another- cling to the thing, whatever it may be, that will let you keep your love alive, anyway.
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So, where do you place your fragile heart when there is not a person to hold it?

You place it in the painting inside your favorite museum. You store it in the short poem you have read obsessively. You leave it in the weather that most makes you want to spend the day outside. You hide it inside the coffee mug with the perfectly placed chip that your grandma gave you.

But who knows? Maybe there actually is a tiny heartbeat inside of the beaten down book by your bed. Perhaps its yellowing pages love you unconditionally. I don’t think it matters much.

Sometimes it is enough to simply have the chance to love, at all.


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