Love is Blind

November 17

They say it is blind. Perhaps it is to some, and not to the rest. One Friday evening, somewhat mid last year, a close personal friend, Gabriel gave me a call. He popped over to the house and we had dinner. Way after dinner, he took out his mobile and turned it on. Puzzled, I asked him why his mobile was turned off. Since he was into personal financial services and real estate, it seemed queer as calls from clients or potential ones might come in. Battery was low and he did not have the charger with him. I did not pursue further.

A while later, his phone kept beeping. Incoming messages. Calls came but he refused to answer. With an inkling of what was going on, I asked if his girlfriend for a year-and-a-half, was the caller, and I hit it right home. Upon asking what was wrong, he shared his story. They have been in frequent arguments, on a weekly basis and things had gotten violent. At first, she threw things around. Then she began taking knives and blades slicing and cutting things that she could lay hands on, including personal computers, clothes and bed. He then showed me a picture taken on his mobile. A bad cut on his index finger with oozing blood, a result of him trying to grab the instrument from her. Earlier that evening, he was in an argument with her, and he needed to get away, so he spent a night over.

This year sometime in May, in one of her anger fits over some trivial matter, she threw his handheld on the floor, and the LCD screen cracked. The device kaputed. She started hitting him with a clothe hanger, and crumpled all his clean, well-ironed shirts, and wiped her tears and snots. Gabriel's siblings came to know, and like me, they advised him to walk out of the relationship, and make it clear with her and her family. Later, we discovered he did not, even though he had earlier agreed to do so.

Lately, I had MSN conversations with him and asked how things were with him. He volunteered the information that she was undergoing counselling sessions in St. Ignatius church. Asked if they got back together, and yes was the answer. I sighed with heaviness in my heart. Having met his girlfriend much earlier over few dinners, not only I was unable to see what he saw in her, she striked me as a spoilt scatterbrain, free loader with a ego that rocketed sky high who happened to think and treat her own boyfriend, my friend like a dog and belittled him in front of his own friends. It was disturbing and heartbreaking to see a friend treated as such.

I have lost count of the times that I advised him to let the relationship go based on facts gathered from him confiding in me. As a friend, I would believe I had done all within my means to help him through bad times, including monetary assistance. Over time, I am exhausted as my words fell on deaf ears, disappointed at his lack of courage, saddened by the erosion of self-dignity. In all these, perhaps no one is as gravely disappointed and heartbroken as his dad, had he knew.

Recently, Gabriel asked if I had a spare car that he could loan for the weekend. He was to go on a family trip with his dad and siblings to Cameron Highlands. His girlfriend's car was in a workshop, and she needed his car to drive down to Malacca to replace another trainer for a beauty workshop. The truth was she made that up. She was not invited for the family trip and she purportedly put him in a spot to choose; her or his family. I was speechless at the extent of her childishness. My call and text to him the night before the trip, asking if he still needed my car, went unanswered and unresponded.

A Buddhist believer might say that he perhaps had wronged her in his previous life, and in this, he is paying for his transgressions. That aside, is love really that blind? I find myself at lost wondering. By horoscope, I am a dreamer and an idealist. As much as I believe in true and unconditional love, I however, do not believe in loving blindly, moreso when it involves physical and psychological violence and abuse. Maybe I am not such an idealist after all, or I have yet to experience the transformational power of love. So tell me, is love also blind to a lifetime of emotional and mental slavery?