Excerpts from Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love:
“I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences.
Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins
when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose
of something you never dared to admit you wanted-an emotional speedball,
perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that
intense attention, with a hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is
withheld you promptly turn sick, crazy,
and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this
addiction in the first place but now refuses to pony up the good stuff
anymore-- despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn
it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny
and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your
neighbors just to have 'that thing' even one more time. Meanwhile, the object
of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're
someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high
passion. The irony is,you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out.
You're a pathetic mess,unrecognizable even to your own eyes. So that's it. You
have now reached infatuation's final destination-- the complete and merciless
devaluation of self."
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