Photo taken by Jyotsna John Francis

This article focuses on the term ‘attachment’ – lathered in the approval, of what I believe to be, the hurt, where the letters are etched with groves of denial, of disappointment congealed into a cool lard of numbness. I am specifically criticising the use of the term attachment in contexts where I believe that under the pseudonym of emotional maturity, it insidiously asks us to engage in the absence of emotion altogether.

My concern revolves around the impact this has on relationships, wherein the audible drawl of misery, I have come across seemingly truistic advice; simplicity is its venom. Our technological breeding has culminated in a merry-go-round of terms which has degraded our perception of love itself – echo chambers, paradoxically, deafen us more than anything. 

Attachment styles have been a widely discussed concept in contemporary times – it fits people into snug categories, blanketed by an understanding of who they are. A path sings out for the avoidants and the anxious. A path away from past misdeeds, from misunderstandings to… to what exactly? What is the ideal form of normalcy? At what point does one shed their category and rise above brazen clinginess and fear of feeling altogether?

Additionally, my apprehension arises from how ‘attachment’ is seen as a symptom of the inadequacy of those in love. To be attached is a flaw. Those who purport this view ask us to be detached from those we love, from places we grew up in, from life itself. It boasts that this is how we sail in the present currents, and learn to appreciate the hue of the waters of experience as they are. Ultimately, it is the age-old tradition of vilifying feeling when we become too cowardly to handle her weight. There are two points of contention;

Firstly, I believe that being emotionally attached is intrinsically human. To love and to mourn that loss is intrinsically human, and here I define love in Murdoch’s words, where ‘love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real’(Murdoch 1959). Love, in this sense, entails an attachment involving a clear understanding that the subject’s will may oppose yours, ultimately assuring that a guarantee on the present state of the relationship is impossible.

Secondly, what I find to be precious about love, is that it distorts time – lets you sit in its grasses while its children fly like geese across the climates. Love, then, has the figure of Persephone, palms reaching between seasons. It means becoming entrapped, embroiled in the bloodline of time, where we exist in the planes of past, present and future simultaneously. You cannot be in love and not slip on the peel of the past, and you cannot hold yourself back from planning the future, and in the sweet kisses of your beloved, the present calls your name. Love licks our wounds and lets us marinate the meat for tomorrow’s dinner. To let a relationship be monopolised by the present would therefore be impossible.

Love requires understanding why the past pervades as I invest in an armour of silence instead of explaining how I feel when my lover inevitably disappoints me. It means going through shelves of memories, dusting off frames, sliding in warm fresh paper and leaving to-do lists in preparation. Culling and curating, love possesses all attributes. Even now, as I write, they bleed into the words, all the faces my heart turns towards. There will always be traces of them here, like a disorganised crime scene, where people walk in unknowingly. Just as knowing the victim means knowing the killer. 

It makes me so incredibly disappointed to see people harbouring resentment for our capacity to be attached, as though the superhuman is something to be glorified. I don’t even think it to be human – it seems to be an effort to dehumanise our nature. Loss is a part of love and a part of life – asking to be without it, to be detached so as to not experience it at all, is asking for the heavy cost of human experience at a knocked-off price. Khalil Gibran understood this in his poetry anthology The Prophet;

 ‘if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you to cover your nakedness and pass through love’s threshing floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears’.

I ask you, in the least patronising tone possible, to experience all the weeping and the laughter. Be attached, love the tether that holds you to these moments and these people, and give yourself the grace to mourn whatever loss this culminates in.