The International Writers Magazine: Lifestyles

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When Love Ain't Enough • Michelle Cochrane My Achy Breaky Heart Somebody asked me to define love the other day. Of course my perspective changes from minute to minute according to mood. For the first time however, I found the words ‘confusing’, ‘difficult’ and ‘heart breaking’ stumble from my mouth. It’s not that I am a cynic. However, I have had the worst six months of my life in this department recently.

As a student, I wish I could say that I have not tumbled from man to man, in search of my dreamboat. After all, which girl hasn’t? However, I found myself realising that perhaps my ex wasn’t as bad as I had made him out to be. Perhaps he was somebody who could make me happy for the rest of my life?

So of course, forgetting the pain that I had caused him in the past, I took it upon myself to ask the poor soul for another chance. Now, for me this is a big deal. I have never asked for anybody back, I have not even asked anybody out. Rejection is just too overpowering.

Yes, I confess, in my moment of half drunken madness, (everybody needs Dutch courage from time to time), I asked if he would consider giving our relationship another go. His words were that he couldn’t as he didn’t know how he felt anymore.
What? He didn't know how he felt?
What surprised me is, at that very moment, I wish that he had just turned around and told me to 'fuck off'. Not knowing where you stand with someone is a lot worse than this and it makes you question not only what you thought there was within a relationship, but also yourself. I knew that I was the one that was in the wrong, after all, I had told him to get lost many a time before. And so I chased. Can you believe it? I chased until I was blue in the face. Only to get knocked back again and again and told that he wasn’t sure.

This was when the old Michelle kicked in. I gave the ultimatum. Or what I like to call, the opportunity. I told him that after three months of trying that I would give him until Christmas to make up his mind. Did he hell? Instead I got told that he would like to give it another go a week after this allotted time slot. To this, I responded no. Emotions running through my mind told me that I had done enough chasing only to get let down and then for somebody to mix up all of those emotions again was too much to handle. Being stupid old me though, a week after this, I actually said yes. This time though, his answer was to tell me everything that he didn’t like about me and hinted that I should change it before we got back together. Are you getting the pattern here folks?

The result of all of this back and forth childishness is this. Sometimes it is ok to chase. However, always remember who you are and why you are doing it. If there is ever a time when you begin to question yourself then don’t do it. After all, it’s true when they say that sometimes love just ain’t enough.
© Michelle Cochrane Feb 2005

Michelle is a 2nd year Creative Arts student at Portsmouth University

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