wrong object of desire: a reflection on paz marquez benitez' dead stars

"Dead Stars" for me is a reminder that it is pointless to fall in love with the idea of love. Often, it is hard to determine whether what one feels is love or just an imitation of it. Infatuation can delude someone into thinking that the passion is really for the object of one's affection, until one realizes that the object of desire really is the idea of being in love.
As in the case of Alfredo who thought he fell in love with Julia till he realized that there was no magic after all, a person who obsesses about the idea of love can never be in love with the object of passion. Why? A person feels good when in love. The roller coaster of feelings makes one truly human. One time, one feels happy; the next, one feels dejected; another time, one feels hopeful. Who wouldn't want to be humanized? It is this element of love that fools some people into the notion that love and infatuation are one and the same banana. Too bad if in the long run, one wakes up to the fact that one is really not in love, and too many sacrifices have been made along the way. Imagine if Alfredo pursued Julia then realized too belatedly that he wasn't in love with her anymore or at all. There was Esperanza who got victimized because Alfredo's relationship with her must have ended. There was Julia who became the convenient excuse for the idea of infatuation. There was Alfredo who was fooling himself into thinking that he was in love with a person, only to discover he wasn't even in love at all.
I do not want to fall in love with a non-person. I do not want to be obsessed with an idea. I want to fall in love and be able to share this emotion with somebody else, hoping that person will be able to reciprocate to add to the fantastic feeling. I want to come out of the phase or be stuck with it eternally knowing that I am truly in love with a human. I want to experience the joys and the pains and the hopes and the despairs associated with love, but not having to feel these without a proper object to receive my emotion. If it entails waiting long just to let the right one happen along, so be it, for as long as the love in me gets awakened by a real person than it being triggered for the sake of being triggered.
The various imitations of love are not unlike stars long dead but seeming alive from our vantage point under the sky. From where we see them, these stars twinkle, sparking light that we perceive as signs of life. However, even as these lights reach our planet, it may be unknown to us that they traveled the space so long that their stars of origin have long been extinguished. Bottomline is, we are seeing falsely alive stars. These stars, in comparison, are the false loves we feel. Loves that we believe have persons for objects but are actually loves that are narcissistic, for they exist for their own sake. These selfish loves should not be taken for the one and only genuine love that is full of sacrifice, emotionally-charged and, most of all, humanizing.