Forgetting Love

Is it possible to forget what love feels like? All melodramatics aside, is it possible for your brain to rewire itself to be so used to the absence of love that it forgets what the big deal was?

I find lately that listening to songs and watching movies has little emotional effect on me unless it has to do with kids. Even commercials.

I've started noticing, in the last few days even, that songs that I used to love and had meaning for me, just leave me bored now. I hear people talk about their husbands or boyfriends and poke fun and complain, and my initial reaction (though I never say it aloud) is 'then why are you still together?'.
And of course the answer would be "because we're in love", but it takes me a few minutes to try and remember that feeling.
I remember at one time thinking the words "I've never been happier", but I can't remember the feeling associated with those words. I can't remember what it feels like to know there is a solid foundation under your feet and trusting that it will always be there.

And when I say 'Love', I guess I really mean being loved. Because you can have crushes and you can ache from the inside out over the thought of a person, and maybe you know them and maybe they're unattainable like a celebrity, but it's not mutual, and it's not real. In turn you can know that someone likes you, but you don't feel anything back.

You can be loved by family, but that's usually a given.
You can love and be loved by your kids, but that's maternal instinct.
But relationship love - the kind you have to find and build and believe in - there's something about the absence of that that can leave this space in your life that you really don't know what to do with. Especially knowing that at one point you knew what it felt like, even if you can't remember it now.

There's this ongoing urge to fill that void, but at the same time I don't feel like there's room. I don't have time to waste with people I don't want to talk to. I don't have time to explain my story over and over again. I don't have time to juggle someone else in my life.

But maybe I've just forgotten how. Maybe when it's right it won't feel like work.

I found a journal in my room dating from 2007 to 2010 completely filled with love and hate and anguish and rage and turmoil and all kinds of things that I had forgotten. Things that physically hurt to read. Things that I had to stop reading because I didn't want to be reminded. But I kept using the L word and kept stating that I wished I could just turn it off. And now that it's 4 years later (maybe 5 if I'm being honest) and I have managed to 'turn it off' I don't know if I know where the on switch is again. And I'm afraid that when I do find it, it will be too familiar and I'll need to shut it off again.

Maybe I over think things. Maybe being analytical and wanting to plan my life beyond next week is my whole problem. I'm just tired of feeling like I'm missing out on something. Like the inside joke or the latest news or gossip that everyone seems to know and you hear whispers of it, but you don't really get it. You don't get it because your mind has tuned it out, and it feels like the further removed you become, the harder it is to tune back in.