on emotion

romance is the work of the devil, and love is his sardonic laughter. late into the nights as we cuddle up in bed, a duvet the substitute for what warmth another body may supply to fend off the biting winter chills, we hear this laughter - hollow, resonating, mocking and eternally piercing. we hear it when we're alone, we hear it in the presence of others, we hear it when we're tired and we hear it when we're lying there unable to catch a breath of sleep, even when the very strength of our wakingness has far left our bodies and our spirits are already deep in slumber before our eyes could even shut.

for love, in any measure or extent, is what jeers at us as we lie there, slowly absorbing the banality of existence. the meaninglessness of being, if it were not for that significant heat sink, upon which our toes pander a measly attempt at intimacy, which is only a guise for annoyance in the form of warmth and personal space.

do you know that feeling when you are in love, or at most, when you are newly in love? the feeling where everything is beautiful and sweet and tasteful and perfection? the feeling where nothing could wrong you and you could do no wrong? the exact inverse of this feeling is the emotion of love when you find out one of many things; that your love is unrequited, that your love cannot be, that your love is futile, that your love is laughable, etc. but, the zenith of this dark, pitiless emotion is when all these antonyms of love and intimacy coalesce and form a realisation that all that you have held dear in ideology is a blatant lie. and even more sarcastically, that the lie was concocted by none other than yourself - fed to an ego that is blind and naive. and that, is what the work of the devil fruits in, also known as the failure of romance.

sometimes, i regret that hopeless romanticism is abundant in my life. in one's life. in anyone's life. not just for himself (or myself), but also for passion, for ideals, for another person, and for love in itself. sometimes i regret it so much because it leads to nothing more than contemplation, and nothing less than heartbreak. but on other occasions, i am happy that this holds true, for what other than human fallacy is a better representation for all that we hold dear - the human condition?

naive, indeed. maybe one day i will have realised what emotion really is, and when i finally do, i will compare and contrast it to this concept of hopeless romanticism. i only pray that i will come out the victor when all is not lost. but if i should ever have to live a lie in order to live a life, then i cannot fathom something more worthy of lying for than life in itself.

and that, is what drives an (the) emotion.