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“Lovespeak: A Technical and Focused Consideration of a Psychological Phenomenon Common to Human Life, Particularly w/Contemporary, Monogamous Western Culture (i.e. The Recovery Process for an All-too-Standard Break Up)”

By David Shreve, Jr.

Introduction
    So once, this boy decided he did not want to deal with the loaded vocabulary of the lowercase “r”-romantics any more. He realized he was through with talks about anything human lasting for an eternity, done with that Wuthering Heights nonsense about souls being made of the same substance. It was, as decisions go, a rather selfish and egocentric one, based purely on the unfortunate fact that that particular vein of lovespeak had not worked to his advantage in specific life situations—namely, one in which a certain long-term, committed romantic coupling afforded a certain important person to convince him that this was the language to speak in, to think in, to make life plans around, and that same certain important person had (on multiple occasions) decided to take the language to somebody else, someone far different than he. She had made a decision (or multiple decisions, more precisely) to live and fuck on the pages of someone else’s story and for some reason, to this boy under inspection, this certain important person’s decisions and actions worked to disqualify the entire language she had once inflated for this boy.




Section 1
    To nurture and camouflage his repulsive self-sympathy, in lieu of continuing to rant about the perils of the healing process to friends who cared justifiably little, he wrapped his dismal philosophical condition in scientific logic, bottom line thought processes, and Occam’s razor insight. For instance, he continued to write love letters to girls whom he met, but only after adopting a far more academic voice (See below).




    Dear girl,
    As soon as I saw you, my inherent, inherited evolutionary breeding instincts sounded alarm. Something in the shape of your hips suggests you are capable of safely and thoroughly producing and carrying children. The fat deposits that swell around your mammary glands indicate an ability to feed and nurture these offspring, as well as an ability to stay warm during the winter, which isn’t as significant an ability in contemporary times, but the sense of recognition that was necessary in ancient ancestors exists in modern man as his common lust for large breasts. Furthermore, semi-conscious selective breeding insight informs me that the quality of your facial features promises that your genes might work well when spliced with mine, giving our offspring a better chance at having symmetrical features which would in turn improve their chances at finding success in modern industrialized life. I just wanted to write to let you know the immediate impact you had on me and explain just why I find you so irresistible.
    Be good,
    Boy


Figure 1: Letter, Example A.





    Hey lady,
    Listen: I am drawn to your pheromones. Something about your company elevates the level and activity of the endorphins in my bloodstream, moving me into a state of joy and even bliss. I think it behooves us to concede that elevated physiological states such as these are always temporary, and maybe we should allow ourselves to further confess that routine and familiarity would only dull this circulatory and neurological excitement. This in mind, perhaps it would be a good idea to take full of advantage of this peaking condition and punctuate it through intercourse, an act which also releases endorphins; this way we can move together into a state of orgasmic euphoria without concerning ourselves with the quiet and disappointing larger life that falls on the other side of our heightened sense of happiness. Do you agree? Check yes or no.
    __Yes <3
    __No : (


Figure 2: Letter, Example B.





    Dear familiar company,
    It turns out that being in your close proximity works to the benefit of my weakened psychological state. I have, from the beginning, placed high value in the social stock of your being “dateable” and inversely, my having paired myself with you and your having shown interest in me has worked to rebuild my own sense of self-value. In short, you are like a social trophy that slowly nurses my wounded ego.
    Please stay?
    Boy


Figure 3: Letter, Example C.





    He rarely delivered these letters to their intended recipients. Instead, more often, he quickly deleted them from his hard drive or crumpled the napkin or paper on which he had written and tossed it in the trash. Then, he would go find his new uninspiring scientific muses and engage them in heartless, rigorous, and often painful sexual activity only to return to his own residence and ignore phone calls for a few days, just in case you-know-what started to happen again. Through the entire process, he would marvel at how much less writing was required of manipulating loneliness than was required for feeding love.




Section 2
    This boy was smart and understood this method (detailed in Section 1) to be more escapism than therapy, more anesthetic than treatment, but he was also committed to the process, because he could look around and see everyday examples of people handling things like this in worse ways, most of them sacrificing immeasurable amounts of pride in the process.




Section 3
    But this boy especially could tell you that you cannot practice that sort of science-based cynicism (discussed in Sections 1 & 2) in just one cognitive category without it infiltrating your perception of all areas of life. A minor example: Under this new attitude, the temperature of his world meant nothing in the way that the air felt against this boy’s skin, but rather it was just the happenstance product of the atmospheric conditions and the position of the Earth and its axis in relation to the sun, and someday not-so-far-down-the-line in a not-so-unrelated process, he and all of it would be dust floating in space. Even more, particular social structures began to make less sense than they had before. He could not understand why everyone else wanted what they wanted. He often struggled to explain his inability to comfortably assimilate himself into any sort of acceptable social position (See below).



“If every life is a rape of our sacred time, then the paycheck is the drug that keeps us from fighting it. And if every death is considered a murder, than more often than not, love is the weapon.”

Figure 4: Explanation, Example


    Normally, when he would say shit like this (shown in Figure 4, above), it was an indicator that he had, at that particular moment, been drinking too much. Which was a further indicator that his method of adopting this new way of thinking was having less than positive results.




Section 4
    One day, this boy, who happened to be throughout his entire life senselessly afraid of birds, took a walk and stumbled upon a small flock of black birds in a covered bridge on a cold and empty back road. Because his scientific mind could find no explanation for his apparently arbitrary phobia and because he could not bring himself to walk through the passageway, he became angry. He expressed his anger by chucking a small stone, just smaller than his fist, into the cylindrical tunnel. The birds took flight and their working wings sounded like small explosions in the hollow echo of the bridge. He noticed then that this was how it felt when that certain special person (referenced in the Introduction of this document) made any attempt at friendly conversation with him lately (as if nothing major had ever happened). Her simple, sweet, formal statement or question flew through the center of him and woke up all those words of which he thought he had rid himself and they flew wildly and it felt like thunder against the barren walls of his scientific heart. And shit, he realized then, he was having no success at killing the poet that lived inside of him.




Conclusion
    The same notion of poetic reluctance (referenced in Section 4) started to recur and surprise him with more frequency. This boy had wanted, after all, before being bothered with the language of lovespeak, to be only a writer. He had wanted only to be left alone so he could be a writer. He started to try again. As he had so many times in the past, he tried to sit before white pages and put on them something that someone might love to read, something like he used to write, but there was nothing beautiful about straight science. He could not connect his scientific mind with his writer’s spirit and when he managed to find any words at all, he discovered himself capable of writing only the simplest phrases, statements that would mean nothing to almost everyone (See below).




I’m sorry...

Figure 5: ...



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