Love Doesn't Exist

A little context: I wrote this on February 16th while I was drowning in a dark place. Then I deleted my Instagram without telling anyone. I’ve been pretty much off the grid ever since, so posting it now feels almost irrelevant (also, I doubt anyone will read it). But maybe that’s the point. This exploration is supposed to be for me, anyway.

It’s still February, and I’m still trying to swallow the jagged pill of acceptance. And what a month it’s been! A month so cruelly, absurdly relentless, with me begging to understand why the universe is gaslighting me.

I don’t write for pity — and to everyone else, these issues are all insignificant because they’re not theirs. Things have almost been comical — except that I can’t stop crying through it all.

Where do I even begin? The little indignities? Like waking up at 4am every single day to teach English online, my only source of income at the moment, only for the dog I was sharing a couch with to puke all over the floor three mornings in a row. Or the additional canceled flights that derailed other plans (SkyTeam…you really have some ‘splaining to do), culminating in my luggage being sent to London without me, forcing me to chase it down like a fool. Or the financial blows that hit harder —unexpected fees, lost deposits, money I thought I’d get back but didn’t.

But the REAL devastation, however, was the realization that my New York community I believed in, my chosen family that I thought I trusted, the ones who I thought would show up for me, didn’t.

I begged for help — sometimes subtly, sometimes outright, in every way I knew how. I reached for lifelines that never came. Friends I would’ve bled for left me hanging. A big housing situation spearheaded by a close friend fell through, leaving me scrambling for a roof over my head. I’m not mad that it fell through — I’m deeply hurt that I was faced with complete silence, only to find out that I had been lied to the whole time. Then losing 200% of my ticket reservations on the night of my show, with half-hearted excuses from people I had historically invested so much of my love in was incredibly humiliating, to say the least.

And then, the GRAND finale — the horrifying gut punch — a person I deeply love twisted the meaning of a previous blog post, received it as a personal attack, and accused me of taking advantage of them — when I made various conscious efforts to never do so in our friendship, given how much this wonderful person has been screwed over by so many in the past. It was the cherry on top of one of the worst weeks of my life. I was left wondering — if love is supposed to be about giving and receiving, then why, when I gave, was it seen as something insidious?

So I’ve accepted it all…or at least I think I have. But acceptance hasn’t brought me peace. It’s just left me numb and hollow. And in this hollowing out, I’ve arrived at a conclusion: love doesn’t exist.

People call love complicated, but when they try to define it, they circle back to the same tired ideas: giving and receiving. The problem is most people take more than they give. And those who take THRIVE. Meanwhile, those of us who crave love, and who still try to give it freely, are left aching, punished for our hope.

Maybe love is just a chemical trick. A sexy physical therapist recently reminded me that love is just dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. Biology, nothing more. If that’s true, then love isn’t some grand, poetic force. It’s just addiction with a prettier name.

Maybe love is a sense of belonging. But do we even really belong? We didn’t ask to be here. And belonging is fragile — transactional, contingent on circumstances, mutual benefit, on the willingness of another person to see us as worthy. If love was real, wouldn’t it be unconditional? And yet, my own attempts at love were met with rejection, misinterpretation, and silence.

Maybe my mother was right. Maybe I am just a burden. And maybe, as she told me seven years ago, “no one will ever love me again.” And if love requires you to believe you deserve it, then maybe it will always be out of reach for me. Maybe impossible. But then again…who the f*ck cares? Love didn’t exist before humans invented it. Dogs don’t love us; they just learned that affection and obedience get them food and safety. If we rewarded them for biting us, they’d do that instead. We project love onto them because we so desperately want it to be real. But at its core, love is just another construct shaped by capitalism, by history, by survival. Marriage was a transaction. Friendship, a tool. Family, a necessity to stay alive. Nothing more until we started complicating it.

And I’ve accepted that.

…haven’t I?

Then why do I feel this way? Numb, unmoored, like I’m floating outside of myself? Acceptance, I thought, was supposed to bring clarity and peace. Instead, it’s made me sick. I found myself binge eating again, stuffing the void where love was supposed to be. I’ve grown bitter and cynical. I don’t like who I’m becoming.

At this point, I’m just…sad. New York took everything I thought I “loved” — performing, friendships, possibility — and spat it back in my face. It left me feeling unlovable. Loveless.

So what now? I don’t know. Maybe I haven’t truly accepted anything. Maybe I failed this month completely. Maybe I don’t have a problem accepting people - I just have a problem accepting concepts. Because deep down, I know ideas can be rewritten.

Off I go to India. I need something to shift. I need to feel something other than this. Maybe I’ll come back with hope. Maybe I’ll come back with confirmation that love really doesn’t exist.

I guess we’ll see.