Back around 2014, I put up a video of mountain stills with Arianne's "Everything You've Ever Dreamed." It was a delightful song from the anime Evangelion, that has me dreaming of beautiful loneliness, and to my surprise, it blew up on MewTube with so many views, with comments saying how they feel every line of heartbreak, they want to be loved by someone special, how lonely it is knowing others get to experience what they haven't yet.

I've been through a couple relationships, mostly online. And I've experienced humiliating rejection from women, who had me feeling like I want to get to know this wonderful, talented and imaginative person - who'd make my heart flutter and leap if I ever got to meet them in person - only for their "caring" switch to be turned off on a sudden whim, and all my words would fall on deaf ears as I get permanently estranged from them.. any further contact or attempts to talk being a mere formality to the bitter end.

It's not a nice feeling, but who could really blame them? If you really think about it, it's disturbingly easy to wind up on someone's bad side, whether it be from a simple remark, an emerging pattern of 'clinginess', or just generally not having those attractive traits that another person might possess. From one of Taleb's sayings, nothing is as painful as when a not-interesting person tries to be interesting. Especially when it's online, when you've never met face-to-face, so off you go, you're dismissed as just another troublesome internet creep.

Even bringing up this topic, there's an air of stigma: the terms inceldom and gamma male already come to mind, with incels being this unappealing, resentful circle of males - who'd whine and bemoan and perhaps circle-jerk one another about not getting a relationship - and gamma-tier males being this weird pole on the socio-sexual hiearchy; the liberal nerds who sport scruffy beards, gaping mouths and maybe thick-rimmed glasses who are notorious for playing the sensitive Nice Guy, while harbouring a delusional and radioactive bubble that one day, their show of rationality and intelligence will make them the rightful kings of life, just you wait!

For me though, it's necessary to eluciate on this issue; as life goes by, and the realities of survival press down on you like a harsh gravity, the ideal of real romantic love which would enliven your soul becomes more of a fairytale you'd encounter in fictional stories, like chasing down rainbows for the Lucky Charms guy. I won't be dispensing tips on how to trick that chick into riding your dick, but I'm also not going to give you platitudes that ostientiably console you, but are really just sorry-ass Hallmark cards that you'd throw in the trash without a second thought, after your heart feels like it's been torn to shreds (gah!).

The damage has been done. She's gone. Not in the sense of being literally dead, as she's still alive and kicking, but dead to you. Whether you act like nothing has happened or seek a shoulder to cry on, she will forever remain coldly indifferent to you and what she's left you with - as God shrugs when His children gets smothered underneath the flames of an erupting volcano. What can you do?

When you open yourself up to a woman and feel her reciprocate your heart, it's as if all those things you've previously held in private, your dreams, your fantasies and hopes, all of that has a venue to express itself through love. Perhaps that is why the saying goes that the other person means the whold world to you, and that when it's over, your world is left more glum and devoid of colour.

Now, the programmer Terry Davis, in all his wisdom, said that losing your (adult) teeth is the first reminder of personal mortality; they don't come back and that's it. But I'll disagree and say that, short of having freak personal misfortune where a family member dies, a person's first encounter with mortality is in relationships. Particularly if you don't happen to be socially adept; you'll see how peers might greet you first, then they disparage you because something about you is off-puttingly not like them, and no matter what, even if you try your damndest earning back their respect, it's just not the same. Or in love, where if you aren't able to have the choice of things ending amicably, it's a choice of how slow or fast you bleed through a cheesegrater just to end the pain of disconnection.

S/he who cares the least holds the power; when things get to this point where you have a voice whispering to you that something's wrong, you can forget about any notions of romance or caring - it's really now a matter of power, contempt and cowardice, like a tyranny held over your mammalian urge to bond. In fact, some people have gone so far as to cruelly abuse spurned lovers, like having their friends jebait the person into a humiliating trap using the promise of the girl reuniting, let alone jeering at them (white-knighting in the girl's favour).

Is it any wonder then, that you have these stories where people end up succumbing to their personal demons? Crimes of passion are still not uncommon; if it's not an Elliot Rodger going on a murderous rampage, then it's someone who turns to drugs, alcoholism, or such-and-such addictive vice to fill the void. Taxi Driver still holds so much power as a movie, because people still connect with Travis's pain, more than ever as modernity's confusion marches on; deep down, you know that if a sense of love, acceptance, belonging and meaningful fulfillment in life seems unattainable, then the option of cathartic destruction would be your friend, all the opinions and social mores of society be damned. A primal cry out just to be felt and heard.

And maybe, you really want to hurt the person who spurred you. Even their hatred, sadness or a sense of just letting the blood flow is better, if you manage to penetrate that facade of indifference they bear, because at least it's setting something aflame under Death's bittersweet winter - hate is merely the flip side of love. Or if you can't touch them, you may end up hurting others who are more reachable.

Because to love, and be loved back in return is ultimately a human need, a way of finding the Kingdom of Heaven through connection. The author Anne Rice said that there is something eternally divine and beautiful to be found in sexuality, as you might witness in seeing passionate dance.. or even experience for yourself when you get the chance with the right person.

Once, I swore that I'll never love again, after all I've gone through. It is better to close off the heart and detach myself from the sadness and pity, the negativity being just vestigal sediments of the past. Others can play the lottery and spin slots at the casino, and I'll keep walking past like the Energizer bunny on steroids.

But as time wore on, it is impossible to deny that my imagination and deepest desires all stem from the heart, those images generated and seen through the mind's eye which help enliven my day, and reveal why it is such a joy to simply be alive.

I would not want you to carelessly throw love away, as I once did..

There is MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), a movement which is filled to the brim with disillusioned men, who'll validly point out how men get screwed over in marriage as women end up flicking the off-switch one day, and consume much of a man's hard-earned resources and dignity in divorce courts. They'll happily lay out all of women's faults in a conversation, painting the female as an intra-species predator in waiting, who obeys her whims without any conscience or forethought.

"Maybe women are a mistake," they go. "Maybe God shouldn't have made Eve who misled Adam out of paradise. Life would be perfect if it's men who run the show; all the women can either fuck off into the background or be put in the kitchen where they belong."

If this is really the case, why are there so many monuments, so many works of art, literature and acts of such sacrifice and such craziness done for the sake of a woman? It was a woman who brought you into the world, showing you the first ounces of real love as a baby. A woman is NOT a man, no matter what all modern efforts to bring equality to the table says, and this is perfectly fine --

Why do we love animals? Mammals like cats and dogs? It is because they express so honestly and without dissimulation what we also are and want. They calm us because they show a kind of carelessness that's normal to animal life, unencumbered by thoughts of the past or worries about the future (none of which actually exist). And women are, in their natural state, close to this condition as well, or closer on the whole, which is where they get much of their charm and power from.

Ironically, modern education which teaches women to be hyper-aware, alert and anxious about the future (as abstract neurotics) actually takes away their power to a great degree, while tricking them into thinking they are being tough or sassy. (Really, a hyper-conscious woman is just made powerless and charmless.)

The real gift of a woman is in her capacity to touch a man's soul, in a way that other men simply cannot. If life held a deeper meaning, it would not be complete without a woman and man. And what about opening the door to risking all the pain, the jealousy, the rage, the madness? All of these you can eventually endure, as life begs you to master the valleys, but to relinquish the primal need for beautiful love is to resign yourself to the confining forces of gravity, in a sin as terrible as wishing you were never born.