Love. It’s graceful, pure, and unconditional…right?

Swans. Swans are beautiful…right? I immediately equate swans with listening to “Swan Lake” by Tchaikovsky as a child. I was always transfixed when it started playing on my family’s radio in the kitchen, which was permanently on the classical music station. The melody starts out calm and graceful, then becomes more passionate, and then ends gracefully once again. It helped shaped my idea of what love and romance should feel like: hopeful, light, passionate, and eternal. Consequently, I always equated swans with love and romance.

“The Swan as a Metaphor for Love” by Amelia Gray presents love as anything but beautiful. Gray presents swans as ugly, disgusting, and violent creatures that have no value. Two years ago, I would have considered Gray’s piece to be odd and bleak. But, after the end of a relationship four months ago, I now can completely relate to the anger and disgust that Gray conveys. I saw my “swan lake” in all its glory and beauty. This person was perfect to me, and I wanted to give my all to make this person happy. But I then went beyond the surface and got swallowed by all the swan shit. 

It is easy to get blinded by your own vision of love. This can prevent you from facing realities that don’t fit your perception of what love should be like. Gray highlights that a swans’ true qualities are easily ignored and can deceive admirers:

“Moving north on the swan’s undercarriage, one will find an eroded civilization of swan shit and pond scum… one that is easily ignored, but look closer, take a more personal approach.”

Thus, love can be a complicated mess that can be painful to confront in its reality. I wanted to think that our relationship was perfect, that I was giving my all to him, and that we were happy. But there came a point when I couldn’t ignore reality anymore, because instead of feeling loved in return, I felt inadequate, confused, and drained after a year. Hence, I felt like the tadpoles that swans slurp up, shit out, and then walk on :

“Swans eat tadpoles. A swan will slurp up entire schools of larval amphibians, process them and shit them out, and sometimes then it will sit in the shit or walk through it, and here we are.” 

Yeah, wow that’s depressing.

Gray ends her piece without any hope:

“That’s all for today about swans.”

Its a thoroughly bitter tribute to love. This ending is not relatable to me. I do actually believe that a swan is a good metaphor for love, because they can represent both the beautiful and unpleasant aspects of love that are natural in any relationship. Even though they do have ugly feet and shit a lot, swans do mate for life and are very nurturing and protective of their young. This representation of loyalty and compassion is trivialized in Gray’s piece, due to their short life spans. So, swans are left without any good merits in Gray’s eyes, and she is resigned to feeling bitter about love. I have hope in love. Being in love makes you vulnerable, and vulnerability makes you brave in the long run. I now know what it feels like to love with abandon, and it taught me valuable lessons on how to balance giving and receiving in a relationship. You can’t recover without hope. It motivates you to learn from your pain and disappointment, opening the door to a healthier and more fulfilling relationship. Having hope and learning from heartbreak are encapsulated in one of my favorite quotes by the author Cheryl Strayed:

“Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start here.”

My perspective on love is now less idealistic, but I do not exclusively equate love with pain. Love can indeed be beautiful and still have its flaws. In a healthy relationship, these flaws are outweighed by mutual respect and care for each other. I’m thankful to have learned this valuable lesson through experiencing a toxic relationship, which was void of mutual respect and care. I’m now able to rise above it, becoming mentally and emotionally strong enough to embrace love once again.

“The Heart is a Torn Muscle” by Randon Billings Noble is a fitting piece to read after Gray’s piece. It encourages you to move past the pain and bitterness, mending your heart in order to have a healthier perspective on love. Recognizing your pain, focusing on your well-being, and seeking help from others are all key aspects of recovery that Noble outlines in her piece. Noble also stresses how you need an intact heart in order to live, because the heart was made to love:

“But for now, right now, put your hand to your chest and feel what beats. The only muscle you can’t live without needs to stay whole.”

By following this advice, I’m not a victim of the past. The past is instead the foundation for a new beginning. I’m ready for love that is imperfectly beautiful. Ironically, one of my anthems in recent months has been “The Heart is a Muscle” by Gang of Youths. Its lyrics have the same message as Noble’s piece: learn from the past, make your heart strong in the process, and look forward to the kind of love that will keep your heart whole:

I will look at love as more than just an instrument of pain, and will give myself completely to the moving and the strange, ’Coz I wanna overcome, And try to love someone…The heart is a muscle, And I wanna make it strong”