Love. This simple four letter word and its romantic, idealistic, heroic, literal and cinematic connotation has always puzzled me, maybe because one of the earliest memories of human love manifesting in all its divine and dignified, out of this world, indescribable and unfelt gloria is a very undignified sight of my family’s neighbour pulling his wife’s hair in front of their children, their guests and their guests’ children at the age of five or six at their own child’s birthday celebration. Of course, they were already heated up after a good round of vodka shots, or maybe two, or three, or no one was probably aware of the accurate number of the times they had drowned their accountabilities back then because alcohol was an inseparable part of festivities, quite often it was also an inseparable part of a simple daily life, and it was as freely flowing as the blood or the love between a man and a woman beyond the wedding wows, behind the closed doors and the all judgemental eyes of insignificant others but right in front of the eyes of almost the same insignificant own kids, but it certainly left an ever lasting impression. I remember, us, the unlucky kids who happened to be there at the wrong place, at the wrong time, born from this so called love, were led away rather quickly and left to play and entertain ourselves with some careless, silly, unsuspecting and imaginative games while our parents continued domestic alcohol abuse and occasional violence episodes to break away from the routinal monotony of what was supposed to be our foundation for love.
Years passed by but the neighbours did not get a divorce, divorce was a thing for cowards, for women cowards, something unheard of, a thing from television screens and wile amoral ideas of the more advanced or more spiritually rotten West on the brink of a total collapse, so if one swore to love for better, for worse, for poorer, for richer, in sickness and in health <…> till death does them part, then they shall drag the cross of love on their shoulders, almost like epic, imaginative saga of Jesus, until the promise is fulfilled and death literally does them part, and not in a heroic way, most likely liver failure sitting in front of the evening news on TV as the most attractive case scenario or bludgeoning as the less desired but not less realistic option. The neighbours moved out some time later, got replaced by young newlyweds with a recently born child who seemed composed, normal and quiet, suspicious in a grey block building full of lunatics and families of drunkards, or maybe just people who were damaged and self-damaging beyond repair, because the fairy-tale like idyl of love had never brushed them with its dainty fingers leaving a trail of confusion and incapability to give something humane to another human because it was never even there.
I never had any news about the neighbours that had moved out but the young couple who filled in their spot eventually became caricatures of themselves a la their predecessors, started voicing their conflicting opinions in increasing volume levels until the husband began coming back home later, and later, being less present in the joint room of now ancient and unfamiliar, almost repulsive concept of newly wedded, and the room of the child, also unfamiliar, the flat and lives of two entangled strangers and the young wife learned that the husband’s love was now enough to bed two women, and maybe even give life to more unsuspecting insignificant children, raise more alienated creatures who will share diseases, wows, alcohol shots, beds, saliva, sometimes chores, sometimes memories, meals, arguments, sex and violence, will share (worst) parts of their executors – parents and, of course, will share the love and will continue the circle/circus of life. Till death do us part.
