Love, you'd be better off dead

Love, you'd be better off dead
With a bullet in your head
Than to come back to me

So burn all the letters I sent
For every word that I meant
There were two that were lies

Yes, thank you Teddy Thompson for such profound lyrics. Love – you’d be better off dead indeed. My closest friends know that if I would ever utter the ‘L’ word in relation to a man, to put me down or place me in a mental institution along with House. I have never been in l and don’t intend on it ever infecting me. As a matter of fact, now at 24 I am preparing for the life that Barbara Pym delineates extensively in her books. I will be ‘an excellent woman.’ Yes. Hmmm or maybe I will be Miss Havisham. Well, tons of choices out there...maybe mad Bertha in the attic.

But before one considers why one was never infected before or how to avoid catching this disease, let’s talk about the first signs of the fever and how it is viewed by different people.
Nietzsche was delighted about love, claiming, “One seems almost transfigured, stronger, richer, more complete; one is more complete.” Ahh yes, happy go lucky Nietzsche. But not to worry, I have the Greek lyric poets behind me on this one, where they describe the l experience with metaphors of ‘war, disease and bodily dissolution’ Now that’s more like it! Ship ahoy, we’ve only just started! L is described as something that “assaults or invades the body of the lover to wrest control of it from him.” Essentially, both have very disparate ideas about love but they do agree that it changes you. When I had my contemporary British literature class years ago, I distinctly remember my professor exclaiming, “L changes you and thank god.” Now about a few centuries ago I still had the capacity to be infatuated by certain persons. And yes, I will concede that in the beginning there were some positive symptoms exhibited as a result of coming into close contact with the virus. Initially, one does have all that vitality and becomes desirous of accomplishing all the deeds one always wanted to do. One might even find oneself being less cynical and misanthropic. Or one might even allow for brighter colors in one’s wardrobe. Of course, while one is in this state one does not usually want to consider how it’ll end…but oh, as sure as Jane Austen is a genius, it’ll end. Later or… sooner. One person will lose his interest and leave, “with pain and embarrassment all round. He will repudiate the relationship, regret his investment in it and move on to new infatuations.”
But this is the end, let’s consider the beginning. After all, there are some symptoms of this ailment, and if you’re Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the ‘the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera.’ So when one starts to experience the onset of the symptoms, does one agree with Plato or Lysias, who asserts that one must stop it when the first symptoms are first felt?