Notes from a psychologist: I like you because… war

War and its consequences have no short–term shelf life. This period is different for everyone. The only thing that matters is that the duration of forgetting a war is proportional to the loss experienced. So, entire generations will live with the losses in the war.

But today, I would like to reflect on a loss that cannot be objectively equated to the death of a loved one but will be just as dramatic in its impact, probably lasting a lifetime. We are talking about the numerous divorces that are slowly beginning to manifest themselves and sprout in the “greenhouses of hearts” of the country’s cities and villages at war.

We will talk about love unwittingly – at gunpoint, waiting for a hit from the sky, or when a bomb, drone or a surplus of broken air defence missiles falls. Love in the crosshairs…

To begin with, it is worth answering three questions:

1. Where does love in war come from?
2. Why do you fall in love even if everything is fine in your relationship, marriage, or family?
3. Is it true love or the spectre of war that breaks your heart and burns your soul to ashes?

Where does it come from? From the deep abyss of the lost right to dream. War be damned! It has made us all orphans of the lost part of our lives – the right to dream, fantasy, and imagination, placing us in the basement of waiting for our participation, in which the right to choose does not belong to you.

Why? Because of the oppressive fear of losing those you love and cherish, which comes from the very depths and embraces your body and soul. It is this fear, which makes your palms cold and smells of sweat, that is the basis for the emergence of love, which you are not afraid to lose and which gives the illusion of oblivion.

Is this love forever? No. This love is the ghost of war that creeps into your life, leaving you to adapt to the conditions of survival with elements of intense feeling, looking like the revolutionary rebellion in the very epicentre of the war.

Will this love live on after the war?

There are many chances. It is possible and probable.

Will this love make it possible to forget the war? Noway! On the contrary, this love at gunpoint will give rise to a sense of guilt that will tick like a clock at midnight after the declaration of victory and bloom in the heart like a mallow even in winter.

And yet, is it possible to save love in war? We will not find an unequivocal answer to this question. There are several possible options.

1. Separation. As soon as you get on the train or got into the car and left, the hours of separation have started. First, there will be the shock of the war, then the painful laundering. Then, the habit of being without him/her. Then erasing the image of the beloved from memory. And at this point, there is a need to renew the image and start all over again, from scratch – from that platform or the closed car door, but with another person, not the one you were seeing off. You have lost…
2. A depressed body. The body will remember the joy of the first touch for a long time. As a genuine amulet of love, it will resist replacement for a long time, but eventually, it will give in under the influence of the desire to feel again and start living in a whirlpool of new sensations. For a long time, it will confront itself, comparing smells, touches, feelings, and under the pressure of new sensations it will force itself to forget. The body will cry, experience the novelty, and then hide the memories far away, probably in the form of disease or mental disorder shape.
3. Lost emotionality. It will remind you of impressions, deep ups and downs, and suffering from things that will never happen again. It is emotionality that will not let you forget. It is emotionality that will force you to return to the past. Emotionality will not give you the right to experience a new love.

There is only one conclusion. If possible, if it is not on the front line, not in captivity, the hell of war, but in its invisible territory, you should not part under any circumstances, do not part. Cherish every moment together! Remember that everything that can happen to us happens not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today. If you are not here today, tomorrow may never come.

“Damn the war,” groans the heart, deprived of what was its life somewhere in the past, without war.