BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES.

I want people to break up. Honestly, I do.

If a friend comes and describes his relationship to me, most times I would recommend a break-up. Instant, bloodless, even via the internet if needed, just to get away from the hypocrisy of it all.

No damage done. A message and it’s over. All is quiet.

You know, some break-ups seem to be wearing a muffler, some relationships have been placed over medium heat and simmer for months like broccoli. And then there are two outcomes. You either rot amid all the vegetables in the pot or your kitchen will catch fire.

Learn to break up if you do not know why you are together. Or more precisely, do not get together if you do not know why you want to. Writers, poets and columnists have exhausted the theme of unilateral or disproportional love. One lover always longs for more, conquers, insists and persists. The second, once in a blue moon, has moments of tenderness that sometimes keeps the couple together, for as many years as can possibly be held together with the glue of self-humiliation. You will say it’s ok, you will turn a blind eye, you will offer a shoulder to cry on, and you will say a couple of comforting words. Because we all assume an expanded tolerance and leniency in love. Because the whip, just like the carrot is supposed to  inspire and to evolve.

You think it’s ok if it hurts, it’s ok if you lose months and weeks from your life, it’s ok if you quit. It is love and it deserves it. But there are relationships of repeated one night stands. Relationships covered in honey but with no substance. While some out there try desperately to label their love lives, others have but their love life. All of these people are lonelier than the lonely.

Why must man label everything he has. And so he sees sympathy and calls it love, and sees attraction and calls it passionate love and sees company and calls it companionship. It is the couples who will talk on the phone once a day. They will go for a drink on a Saturday night and sleep in the same bed five to six times a month. But even if they do not say goodnight, even if they do not wake up together, no damage has been done. They proclaim on their social media they are “in a relationship” even if one does not know the favorite color of the other. They dream, but not as one. The imaginary future of one does not include the other. They are together the way they can, for as long as they can. Until something new and exciting comes along. And at dawn, you will see neither drama, nor will you hear crying, nor bells: the dignity of half-heartedness.

May people learn how to break up, the ones who are living adults arrangements, rather than love. The agreements are loose, discreet, pleasant. They are breaths of fresh air in our daily routine . They are available entity that will stop you from the tiring search of how to exercise your emotional muscles. They are the escort you will have at the annual company party. But romances are inquisitive, effusive and insatiable. They are demanding and require much, just like spoiled children. To sleep and to wake up at the same time. Phones catch on fire and dreams become charged and multiple. They demand everything and have it all. Only these are entitled to be called romances. And these romances are the only thing that would exist if people that were never together learned how to break up.

- Katerina Kehagia

(translated by me from:

http://www.pillowfights.gr/editorial/item401/%CE%9D%CE%B1_%CE%BC%CE%AC%CE%B8%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%BD_%CE%BD%CE%B1_%CF%87%CF%89%CF%81%CE%AF%CE%B6%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%BD_%CE%BF%CE%B9_%CE%AC%CE%BD%CE%B8%CF%81%CF%89%CF%80%CE%BF%CE%B9)