Are we all like that? We hide love, that's how we smother it.

Dear ***, 

You are well, I hope?
Some thoughts from this part of Europe.
"Svi smo takvi. Krijemo ljubav, tako ju i ugušimo" - from the book that I sent you, Death and the Dervish, by Maša Selimović.
This short sentence has so affected me, it sinuously wonders through my brain, and comes back at night to haunt me. The horrible thought has stuck too firmly to my heart to be discharged easily. And now I am sure that I am somehow smothered, or somehow dying among the living. because what is life without love (and I don't mean romantic love necessarily)  -  love as a force that engenders life, the driving force without which all is dry and meaningless?
And I find myself incapable of it, I have maybe never loved anyone. ??  what a terrible thing to say and yet it came out like a monster from my mouth.
 I have yearned for- possessively wanted - admired from distance, yes. but loved?
 it's a depressing thought. and I remember I had a lot of it (love) , but I was incapable of letting it out on the open, of letting it breathe, of opening the windows of my horrid little house where I sat with my eyes turned within, towards myself. and maybe I am the only person I can talk to. and this solipsism has created a sort of an inability to truly converse or hear the other. the other has, throughout the years, become the Other, with the “O” growing wider and wider until it became a horrible abyss: the Great Darkness of which I understand nothing, I just stand in front of it aghast or scream at its incomprehensibility...or even slight boredom?
I have always thought that at some point the love that I feel will be visible to everyone, it will pour out of me in streams of white shimmering light and all will be good and we will live happily ever after. but this terrible quote from the most horribly beautiful book  “Derviš i smrt” aka “Death and the Dervish” – and of course, it doesn’t have to be true, but it hit me with a kind of urgency – that we smother love by hiding it, hit me where it hurts most, and it got me thinking: maybe the supposed love that I feel has passed through inevitable metamorphosis…how could I call love what I could not share, how could I think myself elevated above others in believing in the depths of my own emotions, when, as soon as they were born, they would come back to me to stand in front of the judge of all judges  -me - and could never pass the test, and be allowed to open the doors and live in freedom. ?all the time love has (maybe??) been losing its lustre, tarnished by years of my smothering embrace. I won’t give it to you – nor to you – nor to you – and…and in the end I was left alone, and my golden bird has been so adulated and cosseted, pressed tightly onto my heart that  - 
have you not an idea what happens when things are pressed too tightly, even to one's heart? you find that they have been dead by your own hand, and you didn’t even hear when its heart stopped, so fiercely were you defending it from others. oh god, such depressing thoughts.

why am I saying this to you - i don't know. and I hope you won't demean it by thinking that I'm being romantic or something. I wish. all the real romance I’ve ever managed to accrue stayed closely attached to my mind or slight trembling within myself – except from those earlier days that I now remember as being my knightly adventure into the World of material things – but those days are gone. 

Primjedbe