I'm wondering, why does it feel better to love than it feels to be loved?

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Aren't we, at our deepest levels, pretty much governed by instinct?

One of my sister's professors once told her that humanity was free of instinct, that humanity always had a choice when it came to deciding how to behave, what to do, how to react to stimuli. That, as human beings, we were governed by what we had learned as we went through life. That, with us, it was all nurture and that nature had become irrelevant.

My sister's professor was an idiot.

We may often seem to be governed by thought and knowledge and reason and experience, but that's just the surface of who we really are. That's just what gets projected out to the rest of the world.

The real person lives inside of us. Our heart and our soul. And there's nothing there but emotion and instinct. That's who we really are.

You ever try to reason with your heart? It's not that it doesn't listen. It simply cannot understand what you're trying to tell it. Reason is the domain of the mind. The heart only understands emotion. Joy. Love. Sorrow. Shit like that.

The more basic the feeling is, the more powerful it is.

Every now and then I have a thought. Sometimes it's just something I ran across in the past, but since I can't really remember running across it before, I think that I came up with it all on my own. Today I wrote something in a PM that was such a thought. Someone had asked whether it was possible to choose whether to fall in love or not. I responded:

There's no choice. Sometimes you can fight it with everything you've got and you still fall. It's like gravity, only stronger.

Like gravity, only stronger. I like that. Flap your arms all you want, you're still going to fall.

But I ramble. Back to my original question.

Why do we continue to love, even when we're not loved back? Why do we stay in one-sided relationships? Even worse, why do we stay in abusive relationships?

Because we need to love someone more than we need to be loved by someone.

Don't ask me why this is. I have no idea. I just know that I've done all three.

Let's say that someone loves me. Let's also say that I love someone else. I have a choice to make, and I'm always going to make the same one. I'll hurt the one who loves me, and I'll be hurt by the one I love, and nothing will ever change, and everybody will be miserable forever.

This doesn't make any sense, but sense is the domain of the mind. The mind cannot understand the heart any more than the heart can understand the mind.

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You know what, I'm really trying here. Trying to emote without emotion. Trying to feel without feelings. I'm trying, and I really don't appreciate my mind telling me how pointless this all is. Maybe pointlessness is the point I'm trying to make. Huh? You ever think of that, you asshole mind, you?

I'm going to stop now.