{PDF EPUB} Reality by Sumaiya Ahmed Love Is a Smoke Raised with the Fume of Sighs
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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Reality by Sumaiya Ahmed Love Is A Smoke Raised With The Fume Of Sighs. Throughout history and literature, there have been various forms of art depicting, explaining and showcasing love, and along with it, heartbreak. They are not just words you read or hear about, but rather emotions felt reverberating in the deepest parts of us, for as long as we’ve existed. I’ve felt both. I have written about both. I have been in love and I have felt heartbreak. There have been times when I gave my all and everything to a man, no half-hearted giving, trying to be the best I could be. I wanted to be it all, because I wanted to feel loved in return and worthy. But by doing this, by the time this man had left, I was empty, nothing left to keep me together, and felt heartbreak right to my very soul. It was an all-encompassing feeling, shattering everything and tearing away at whatever happiness or hope I’d once had. I’d bleed red and turn it into poetry, to try and make it pretty. We’ve all seen the quote that goes something along the lines of “we turn our pain into poetry, all that blood was never once beautiful; it was just red.” That’s how it was for me. I’d try to make the pain into something other than pain, as a way to cope. Maybe that is how all art is born. I always gave more of myself, always loved more, always poured everything I was and had into my relationships. And it was some time after my last relationship that, when I was left trying to heal from what seemed like never-ending, soul-crushing heartbreak for two years, I realised I couldn’t keep giving and giving and giving, when I got nothing in return, that I couldn’t put everything I have into a relationship that could end one day, with a person who could, at any moment, decide they didn’t want to stay. With heartbreak come the bitter, hard truths and lessons, embedded in each thorn. They hurt and they make you bleed but they are needed to realise that whilst love can exist without heartbreak, it doesn’t necessarily fit the other way round. Heartbreak does not exist without love. So here I ask: is love worth the heartbreak? If I’d been asked this years ago, or even last year, I would’ve said no. Because who wants to love and be loved, for it to one day end, and then just feel their heart break into pieces they can’t ever fit back together? It changes you. Believe me when I say this: heartbreak changes you. I’d spend nights, for months on end, crying myself to sleep and willing it, and everything, to end because I couldn’t cope, I couldn’t deal with the way the hurt cut away at me. It tore me apart, ruined me — during that time I lost so much weight, the ability to function without wanting to succumb to tears and sleep, but I couldn’t sleep. I was struggling to see the point in continuing, because really, all that love I buried into another person was pointless and, in the end, meant nothing, since I was now alone and, I thought, worthless. I defined myself by this loss, by this heartbreak. It was all I could think about, all I could feel, and nothing worked to help ease this pain splintering me apart. A few months after the breakup, I began throwing myself into studying, revising, writing essays and presentations, because I wanted to keep busy, and I thought maybe if I bettered myself, he’d come back. That wasn’t a healthy way to live. By holding onto an empty hope, I was destroying myself. It took me far too long to wake up from this heavy slumber, to see that I was so much better off without him, without giving away parts of myself to someone who never really valued me or appreciated me. I was worth so much more than that. But even when I’d moved on, I still stood by my answer: love was not worth the heartbreak. Why would it be, when it ruins you to the point where your perspective of life shifts into something so much darker? Could it ever be worth it, when you end up seeing love as something that destroys and steals, takes the best parts of you and crumples it into dust, when it just makes you suspicious of everyone who gives you their attention? When it makes you never want to fall in love again? It wasn’t worth it. That’s what the Sumaiya from this time last year would have said. Because even then, when I’d moved on, I didn’t want to love again, I didn’t want to take that risk. But despite how my ex left, and how he broke my heart, it’s because of him I made the best decision to get back into education and, for that, I’ll always be grateful. And the Sumaiya now says that love is worth the heartbreak. It was only almost half a year ago that I’d changed my mind, because I found my person. I found someone I am happy to take that dive off a cliff into the unknown with. In saying that, I mean, I love him and if that means it ends one day and I have to try to mend myself and fix whatever parts of me get broken should he leave, then it’ll be worth it because I love him and I am loved in return. Because he brings so much light into my life, into every dark crevice and corner, splintering away the moments when I crumble, making sure to hold up the weight with me. Love can consume you, love can break you, but love can make you heal and love can make you whole. By that I’m saying: by loving someone, I broke, but by loving someone again and being willing to take that chance again, love healed the remaining parts of me that I couldn’t. It’s a beautiful feeling when it’s wholesome and healthy, when you can trust that person and know they’ve got your back no matter what; when you can look at them and just know that this person is it and this love is, and will be, worth it. You just know. The most popular love story we all know is, of course, Romeo and Juliet. When we first meet Romeo, he’s in love and all heartbroken over Rosaline who does not reciprocate his love: “Why, such is love’s transgression. Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest With more of thine: this love that thou hast shown Doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; Being vex’d a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears: What is it else? a madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet.” ( Romeo and Juliet , Shakespeare, W.) From this, I guess it’s safe to say heartbreak is pretty much in most literature. “Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs” is a gorgeous line, and one that’s actually one of my favourites. It illustrates the way our bodies, almost unknowingly, react and hold onto to the emotions unfurling inside of us. Romeo says love is a form of madness, choking on something sweet. This makes it seem as if love can be deadly, despite the sweetness of its appearance at first. Quite a number of Shakespeare’s works convey love, and heartbreak, and the actions people make as a result of love. We can see this in Macbeth, when he kills the king, spurred on by his wife. Love turned into something toxic and dangerous, a sentiment that echoes in the film Gone Girl (2014), where Amy so carefully and subtly framed her husband for her disappearance and murder. This film, based on the book by Gillian Flynn, exposes the fears surrounding some couples, the not being the ‘Cool Girl’, a persona put up to get the guy and keep the guy, the one that most guys want really, anymore and doing whatever it took to secure that place back in their partner’s life. Here, love became a darker emotion, wherein it would’ve been better to have been heartbroken and alone than to stay in a toxic and potentially dangerous marriage. The reason I include Gone Girl is to highlight the importance of knowing when to get out. Sometimes it is better to walk away from a relationship, when you no longer make each other happy, if you’ve exhausted every other method to keep it alive and healthy (e.g. counselling, time apart or time together, recreating the moments that first made you fall in love [going on dates etc], and just talking.) Baumeister (1993) says ‘Perhaps neither loving nor being loved is enough; only when they are combined in a mutual relationship is there a significant chance for happiness’. Personally, I agree and disagree. Whilst of course, a mutual relationship wherein you love and are loved increases chances of happiness, it also leads to the heartbreak which takes away that happiness completely, thereby making loving without, and before, a relationship easier to cope with.