(ARCHIVE) Escaping From Love

Original artwork by me:)

(Originally published on Jan 31, 2023)

Recently, my English class at school started a poetry unit, where we have to analyze poems and also write poems. Our given topic to write about was 'Love'. Of course, our whole class erupted in awkward laughter and the casual teenage "uUUUuuGGhHHhH". After all, love is treated as a childish, almost cringe-worthy concept in this age group(that made me sound really old🗿).

I'm actually not quite sure why the idea of love became like this, and honestly I think a lot of the time, we miss out a lot because of our immediate negative reaction towards love. Love is, in my opinion, a really fun topic to take a deep dive into. It has no complete definition, and it takes different forms and sizes for different people and for different situations. Sort of like water.

Water is a really good metaphor for love, now that I think about it. Like water, love takes no set shape; it can fit in water space it is given, although it may need to throw away or add more to itself to fit in, and it can be cold or warm, solid or liquid, intoxicating or clean, depending on the environment it is in.

But can there be too much love? Too much that now, it takes the receiver's breath away, and drowns them in the expanse of water that used to be so giving?

(...Ok, that was depressing.:/ Moving on-)

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⚠️SPOILER ALERT!⚠️

(There are going to be mentions of how the book Nemesis by Agatha Christie ends)

So yeah, I've been reading Agatha Christie's Nemesis. It's one of the books in the Miss Marple Mysteries Series, and the plot of the story is that Miss Marple received a letter from Mr. Rafiel, and old aquaintance who died a few weeks before the letter was received, asking her to bring justice to a crime. However, Mr. Rafiel did not specify what crime, and does not provide any more details than that, instead seding Miss Marple off on a tour of historical houses and gardens. The mystery unravels as Miss Marple interacts with the strangers going on the tour with her, and also a few people in a town while the tour stopped by. 

I've noticed that despite the book being called 'Nemesis', there wasn't much mention about that word (or even the definition of that word), and rather a lot of focus was put on the concept of love. For example, the last thing Miss Elizabeth Temple, one of the characters Miss Marple meets in the tour, says to Miss Marple when they first converse is: "'Love!'. . . 'One of the most frightening words there is in the world'" (78). This idea of love being "the most frightening" word is constantly repeated in the book, and the plot itself revolves heavily around this idea too.

I'll try to avoid any big spoilers, but it's hard to get to what I want to talk about without spoiling a

As the story continues, we find that Verity Hunt, who was secretly engaged to Mr. Rafiel's son, Michael Rafiel, was murdered many years ago. Michael was arrested for Verity's murder, but one of the police department leaders insist to Mr. Rafiel that he doesn't think think it was Michael that killed Verity, because he truly loved her.

Which turned out to be true. There's another individual Verity loved, and was extremely loved by, although not romantically. That individual was almost obsessed with Verity, and one of the characters explain that they think Verity "'was conscious. . . of a wish to escape. Escape from being loved. To escape, she didn't know into what or where'" (222). They also explain that they believe through meeting Michael, Verity found where she wanted to 'escape' to, as she had found a new type of love, a romantic, fulfilling love, from him.

At the very end of the book, when confronting the murderer about the murder, Miss Marple and the murderer have a conversation about why they killed Verity. Miss Marple repeatedly says that she knows the reason the murderer killed Verity was because of love: "'. . . Because you loved her, you killed her.'" (265).

"'. . . Nemesis is long delayed sometimes, but it comes in the end.'

'What are you talking about?'

'About a very beautiful girl you killed,' said Miss Marple.

'Whom I killed? What to you mean?'

'I mean the girl Verity.'

'And why should I kill her?'

'Because you loved her,' said Miss Marple.

'Of course I loved her. I was devoted to her. And she loved me.'

'Somebody said to me not very long ago that love was a very frightening word. It is a frightening word. You loved Verity too much. . . She was devoted to you until something else came into her life. A different kind of love came into her life. . . she loved him and he loved her and she wanted to escape. To escape from the burden of the bondage of love she was living in with you. . .'" (264-265)

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My Honest Thoughts

The idea that one can love something (or someone) too much is really fascinating to me. After all, Love is, most of time, represented in media as something that can fix someone, and something that people need to find a 'happy ending'.

This book is not the first time I've engages in the question of whether you can love too much. I create original characters a lot of the time, and most of their dilemmas come from love; either loving too much or loving too little. Love is such an amazing topic to talk about, or to create about, as the possibilites are endless. You could go from creating a hero who learns to love through adventuring after the lack of love they received as a child, to creating a villain, who craves love so much so that they would do anything to keep it in a cage for only them to see.

As I mentioned before, I'm reading a lot of love poems these days because of my English class. Rupi Kaur's i do not want to have you really resonated with me, as it explores the idea of being "so complete" as an individual that love does not need to "fill the empty parts of [the speaker]" and instead can add their complete self to their love to create a more healthy love (4, 2).

I think this is basically the answer to my question of whether someone can love too much. Yes. You can love too much. You can love way too much so that you don't want to ever let go of your love, and even thinking of letting go is painful, but that kind of love will, in the end, drown and suffocate. Two in a relationship must be their own person for that love to strive. The murderer loved Verity too much. They were not able to be her own person, and she was not able to let Verity be free to love another. They wanted, and they needed, Verity, and they would do anything to love her. Even kill her.

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Ok, this was way longer than I expected it to be. What are your opinions? I want to know different perspectives on this question, because I really, really do think it's a topic that is 'something to think about'.

See you next post!