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This is the official blog of Winna Efendi, author of several bestselling Indonesian novels.

Minggu, 15 Maret 2009

Love and Obsession

What is the difference between love and obsession? Didn't both make you stay up all night, wandering the streets, a victim of your own imagination, your own heartbeat? Didn't you fall into both, headfirst into quicksand? Wasn't every man in love a fool and every woman a slave?

Love was like rain: it turned to ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn't go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, Dear you, goodbye from me. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you'd known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you.

-taken from Alice Hoffman's the Ice Queen, my latest possession-





Reading Alice Hoffman's prose always makes me feel sentimental, and wants desperately to write. Yet my fingers are numb with invisible pain, each stroke tired and lifeless. Each word means nothing, like evaporating air. A shadow that is not visible, the scent and sound of rain pelting in the background.

Isn't love correlated to obsession? Either you fall into obsession first, and then it grows to something more like love. Or you fall in love first, and then you become obsessed with the individual, or the charm of love itself. Hoffman is right, you fall right into both, at different times, perhaps, but both. It is inevitable, that streak of possessiveness, that pain of love, that need to own, the urge to have.

But isn't it okay, though? Because with a little of both, love should be balanced. Isn't it boring to have love be so selfless all the time?

picture taken from here

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