Love and Madness. on Booklust

I've made more of an effort, since I've started off again, not to use this blog as a way to simply channel other blogs. But today as I perused through the two hundred posts that were sitting unread in my google reader, I came across a bit from Patricia Storms of Book Lust regarding a book by Elizabeth Smart called By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.

It was just simply a beautiful post. It caught my eye. I thought then that I should put it up but decided against it. It wasn't until now after having went to bed and that I finally decided to get up again to repost an excerpt:

Just a little too rich for my tastes, I'm afraid. Though perhaps it is not just Smart's writing ability that is entirely to blame. I truly do believe that when one is in love, in that heightened passionate state of love that we know does not last, I think one is a little insane. I only have to read some of my own poetry during my own wretched romance to know that I was suffering from some strange sickness. Everything he touched I adored. I loved the way he walked, the way he held a pencil, even the way the smelled. One night, early on in our relationship when we were just friends and I desperately ached for the return of his love, he forgot his grey pullover at my house. All night I held it close to me, drinking in the smell of him. He, on the other hand, wanted to change everything about me – the way I dressed, the friends I chose, how I presented myself as a woman in front of others. And sadly, for many years I acquiesced to all his demands, because I was convinced I was nothing without him. Most people thankfully recover from this illness, and are thus resistant to any future insanity, not unlike catching measles in one's youth, and thus being free of the disease for the rest of their lives. Of course if we're lucky we fall in love again, but we've built up scars and scabs that hopefully protect us from making stupid decisions and letting our emotions completely overtake our lives. To love, rather than to be in love, is I think, the preferred condition.

Finish reading back at booklust.