Love Ain’t No Antidote

1969, Johnny Cash’s “cause i love you” was released. He explained how he would protect,
respect and love her. But did the very opposite in reality. June’s love for Johnny is to be must
heard. He cheated on her and several others.

Eminem. Rap God. The Slim Shady. Jimmy. Rabbit. The person who is living in emotional
trauma since his birth, be it his parents or his wife. Although he has murdered so many rap
careers in his life, he is emotionally weak and burdened from inside. Hear the song “Bad
Husband”, 48 years after Jhonny’s “cause I love you”, you will listen to his inner Marshal.

Well. Here. One had their part of love and life attached. One didn’t. One sowed what he loved.
One lost wonderful support just because he was a narcissistic prick piece of - . One still loves his
family (if you know Em, you know Hailey) . One never had a family. One was never part of the
family.

Boon or bane, all of us idealise love. We treat it as a Chamomile for life, we need to relax, we
need to feel us, we need for the future or take it or leave it, we need it just to act cool. Lemme
create an illusion here: Parents tell us to study for better marks. Better marks - Better college.
Better college - better job. Better job - beautiful girl. Our films, novels, the girl next door’s
stories, ‘can I buy you a drink’ guy’s story snippets, all, all praise it as our aim of life, the
penultimate cure to our sorrow and strife. And we exaggerate love because we idealise it.
Therefore, every coffee or every place that you visited, or every thing that you said or did, or
everyone that you hung out with, incurs a price.

When we believe that ‘cause I love you’, we are more inclined, like Cash, to neglect basic
values, respect, care, possessivity and devotion to the people we care for. And moreover, if you
fail at these and still claim. Term it as ‘i love you cause’.

But the second one, Em. Hearing his albums we realise that it’s not just love that one needs to
make a relationship healthy. Nor just pure emotions or high passions. You give your bond some
time, you will understand that, our life and relationships are fueled with something more than
just LOVE. And the success of your relationship falls prey for your ideologies.

Some-take-it-or-leave-it facts about LOVE

Admiring just-love causes us to develop delusional suppositions about what love actually is and
what it can do for us. These delusions then sabotage the very connection we hold dear in the first
place.
Allow me spit some facts:

1. Love ain’t mean compatibility

You saw her doing her hair. Eyes met. Exchanged smiles. Cheered for some wine pours. STOP!
Yes, right there. Right there you fell for her, you felt the tickles and gooses poking you, heart
competing it’s own speed as if it’s some time trial. You conquered it, you conquered the feeling
of love. Yeah you fell for her. But wait a minute, does this necessarily mean you are going to
have a good partner for you to be with over the long term?

You have no blurred vision. You move ahead. Lemme question you now, what about the other
elements? Love is an emotional affair, whereas compatibility is a logical affair. At times, they
turn into oil and water, and don’t blend well.

Yes, you can fall for one who is disrespectful, violent, dominant, insensitive or someone with
erectile dysfunction. Will you still be satisfied with his love?

Yes, you can fall for one who has a different approach to life. Hmmm, alright, so you like a big
fat Indian wedding? He may like a simple court marriage. You want to stay away from your
parents and in-laws? She wanna stay with everyone. All such things feel easy peasy to resolve,
but trust me my friend they can squeeze your thought process when problems start to evolve.
You both start contradicting each other.

You start to have blurred vision. You have lost it. She, doing her hair aint no mesmerising
anymore, no smiles exchanged, no words spoken, always on phone but you just scroll and no text
or no call, you rewind your thoughts back again. Wait, wait, wait! Stop right there. Felt the
compatibility now? Now my friend, go ahead.

Shhhhh, I was being counterintuitive

When we friends sit for our booze fell ups, we often end up talking about our respective real life
problems. Now when I backpedal a bit, I’ve heard, witnessed and been part of their hustle with
their so-called ‘spark’, ‘connection’, ‘yeh waali/waala alag hai’ terms. Just because you both like
the desert or scotch that you ordered or John Lennon’s song that was being played or each
other’s fashion sense, DOES NOT PAY FOR YOUR COMPATIBILITY. You can’t count on a
guy’s gentlemanship if he opened that damn door, pulled the chair for you, complimented you
with his hot yet cheesy pickup lines on your very first date, likewise you can’t tag her smart or
independent lady if she paid the restaurant bill with some good tips and passed on a warm hug
before she sat in your car. Come out of your lala land, life has to serve something more this time,
aint no desert this time.

2. Love: Not an antidote for relationship problems.

My past relationship, aged 4 years before separation. We truly were mad for each other.
Different states, different cultures, different ways of upbringing and different lifestyles never
really mattered. Because we were prepared for it. We knew exactly what we were upto and
where we had to take this relationship. Both of our families knew about it. It was a kind of sorted
and peaceful relationship. Until one day, when we had some misunderstanding, we fought and
finally stopped talking to each other. I thought why? What was the problem? Where did I go
wrong? We were sorted, we even used to agree ‘cho cute, these tiny pebbles never matter for our
trek’ after every argument, where did that cho cute dissolve?

Although all our major problems were sorted, our tiny yet important issues still gave us no hope.
(We suffered a stone bruise, you pebble) The major cause for this was time, I stopped giving
time for her, I stopped praising her, I stopped everything that I should have never stopped. I was
self-absorbed. We used to talk over the phone for long hours but none spoke except the silence
that we never wanted. We face timed but with a dark screen. We were no more sharing our daily
routines. We started talking once every week or so. Not surprisingly, the relationship exploded
into flames and plummeted into oil spots like Chernobyl. The rupture was awful. But wait-a-
minute, I did say to her that I loved her all this while. Didn’t that make no difference? Yes, it did
not and it will obviously not. Hence, I said,

LOVE AIN'T NO ANTIDOTE.

3. Love is not life, stop oblation.

Love is divine, worship it! Love is divine but that also does not mean you should abdicate your
career, life goals, family, your mental health and etcetera just for your love. Well, that anyhow
won’t make any sense, if you love your career, family and life goal thereafter finally abandon
them just to conquer your love. It’s straight and simple, you are abandoning love to get love!
Boooooof, flabbergasted right? So keep your sense attached when sacrificing something. Does
that matter to you? Or it does not?

Love makes you shift outside your limits, to comfort the other. Do you like pizza with broccoli
and pineapple as toppings? That’s okay. You order two different coffees with different sugar
levels just because he prefers more sugar? It’s okay. Are you comfortable wearing those
colourful PJs or boxers at home? That’s your choice. You don’t have to shift to sausage and
pepperoni toppings just because he likes it. You don't have to reduce your sugar intake just
because she prefers it. You don’t have to wear black Pjs or boxers because he hates coloured .

It’s okay! It’s okay to be you. Your partner liked you when you were having the same sugared
coffee, wearing those colourful Pyjamas, spreading your legs on the coffee table, having your
pineapple pizza and netflixing and chill. He loved you then, he would still love you now.

This also does not mean one shouldn’t change to comfort the other. If you have changed, do not
call it a sacrifice. It’s understanding. If you start having sugarless coffee, or if he suddenly starts
liking pepperoni over pineapple or if she starts shopping for all black pjs, you don’t call it
sacrifice. It’s understanding! If you misconcept this, it's a misunderstanding. Correct it!

4. Love does not assure your hustle.

Right about another fact under take-it-or-leave-it.

Let’s get to reality! So you and your partner both are students. You guys are having a wonderful
time in your dating phase, you go on dates, travel together, stay together, get broke together,
fight, depart, get back blah blah blah. Then you both graduate. Your partner earns a job whereas
your full time job is loving your partner. What makes you eligible to marry her? What makes you
think she will marry you? Why do you think she should marry you? Or can you convince her
parents that you will keep her happy feeding your love? Or are you planning to marry her and
keep her in a suppressed life?

Brother, understand, if you can’t keep as happy or over as her parents did, then you don’t deserve
her. Better move on and get a life! Your love for her does not pay your bills, your love for her
does not make a meal, your love does not help pay your child’s expenses. Your love is just your
love! Not your life nor hers.

Same way, if you can’t be a part of his hustle then don’t try to be a part of his success. If you
can’t convince him to get hold of his career and give him all the time he wants to pursue it, at
least do not waste his time. If you can’t help him by giving him more time, do not say ill. If you
can’t convince your parents to give you both more time, do not brag. If you had no expectations
of him at first, why did you drag? Why did you bubble his love when you were sure you can’t be
a part of his hustle?

So it’s never one sided, you need to hustle in your own way to keep the relationship going! If it’s
broken, then again. It’s not one sided. You both failed at it terribly. Accept it!

Ain’t no hustle, ain’t no love!

“THEN WHAT’S FUCKING LOVE MAN?”. You ask.

‘I love you’ and ‘I hate the day I met you’, is it possible that these are said by the very same
person? Can a person love you and hate you at the same time?

Or can a person love you with whole heart, whereas hate you with whole heart for a couple of
minutes? Indeed! We yeah it, ‘cause we all have been through it.

Now think of a person that you love more than yourself. You dad? Your mom? Your daughter?
God? You brother? Let it be anyone. Tell me, have you never said or thought ‘I hate you. Stay
away and don’t talk to me anymore. You are bad’ to the person that you thought about just now?
Naturally, you did. Calm down, that's not weird, we are all humans after all. Right? If not, then
close the fucking thing and shoo off, this ain’t for you.

So yeah, when a person loves someone, irrespective of what the other means to him, there is
always a portion of his heart that loves him so much, so nobody can express much about him.

You wanna show love, you wanna stay with someone or something forever. Love is not just that!
Love is something more than that. Love is when a person is worried about another person, when
a person is concerned about another person because he is disappointed with the person he loved,
when a person loses his words, spit ruckus he won’t be in his consciousness, he will just be
caring about that particular action that another person has done which disappointed him. When
something as such happens, love can't help him to fade away the disappointment, but it’s hate,
anger, frustration and disappointment that does. And this is called ‘pyaar ka side effect’. This
doesn’t happen in the absence of love but it happens in it’s presence. Or else why would you
fucking care for a person whom you do not love? Have no effs to give them right?

Kate Chopin’s The story of an hour has a protagonist called Louise Mallard. Her love was
enormous, much more than anything she loved her man, but nevertheless she didn't. She had
ambivalent emotions, she was indeed a human being, she never hated her husband and she never
loved him or the lady. She thought about herself just that little bit, about liberty, but she always
liked him, she was human with conflicted feelings, she died of good cheer, of Adore, there was
no problem that could not be resolved for her.

It’s impossible for love to work in peace and happiness. It must be wounded, cursed, thrashed,
hated but still loved. That’s love!

Inker:

The best content writer, story writer, song writer, an entrepreneur, working professional,
business strategist, tag a job, and I ace it. Greetings people, Vinod Chinnannavar here, the person
with more sense of humour than the letter H. First things first, cheers Aaron, thank you for this! I
have been penning down my thoughts even before my school allowed me to use a pen. No, I
never shared them. I said I penned them down, duffer. So shitting my words out on that unruled
paper was never a big deal for me.

Here, in this anthology, I said Aaron I will be writing about ‘Love Gen Z’ or ‘Millenial Love’, I
started researching what exactly is love according to Gen Z (what do you mean I should write it
on my own. Don’t you need stats and figures to prove your point or do I have to create them on
my own too?) but it was boring. I couldn’t understand the love that these millennials are acting
upon just like them. So after 16 days of intensive sacrifice, I dumped the topic. It was the
weekend, I was out with my friends on a drive (I know you know). Then suddenly, I got the topic
and I started noting my thoughts. And that’s how I wrote ‘Love ain't no antidote’.