Do You Still Believe in Love?

On “Gold Dust Woman,” shattered illusions, and why I still believe...

Music takes me back somewhere and makes me revisit the emotions I felt at the time. Yesterday it was “Gold Dust Woman,” which came out when I was still a kid. I remember it making me sad. Obviously, at that age, I had no romantic experiences to relate it to. But it still made me sad for some reason. I’m not sure I understood what an “illusion of love” was, or even that love could have illusions.

And yet, I think my first illusion of love shattered when I was four, when my mother died in front of me. Not because my mother didn’t love me, but because she did, and she died anyway.

The illusion was that love could keep someone here. That being deeply loved meant I was actually safe. That my mother would not suddenly disappear and leave me, a four-year-old, in a world no one would explain.

Afterward, the adults around me did not help me understand what had happened. Her name became surrounded by silence. My grief had nowhere to go. And when June, my stepmother, came into my life, love began to feel conditional. It became something I could lose by needing too much, asking the wrong question, making a mistake, or failing some rule I did not understand.

It isn’t only heartbreak. It is the moment when you realize the love, loyalty, friendship, or belonging you thought you had may never have been what you believed it was.

Story of my life, seriously.

There have been so many people I trusted. Years of work I devoted myself to. Friends who were there only when things were going well and disappeared when my road got difficult.

The pain was not only, They hurt me.

It was, Was any of it real? Did I misunderstand the whole relationship? How could someone who loved me do this?

Shattering the illusion of love forces you to look backward and question every memory, every promise, every time you felt safe or valued. Once the balance reversed, they were done with me.

It’s kind of heartbreaking.

I also think the words “Did it make you cry, make you break down” get to me because they acknowledge what it feels like when you have to keep going even though everything inside you wants to stop and cry. The song makes it seem like you were entitled to be broken by it… to collapse, then pick up the pieces and go home.

Yet, I am not cynical about love.

Even though my heart has been broken many times, in many ways, from parents to pets to romances to friendships, I still want to believe love can be real. That people can be real. That they will stay when the going gets difficult. When you don’t have anything left to give.

It makes me sad that I believed some people were genuine, only to realize the relationship mattered to them when it benefited them. Once it got too difficult, they weren’t there anymore.

Every person who withdrew affection, rewrote the relationship, or made me question whether I ever mattered brought me back to that same four-year-old realization:

I thought love meant I was safe.

Apparently, it doesn’t.

But somehow, I still believe in love.

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