Eat Your Heart Out: Macrophaging Love
Love. Heart. Obsession. (Image: AKJAM Publishing)
Love makes people feel crazy thoughts and do crazy things. Mother’s are not excluded. The love between a mother and her child is based on attachment and protection. According to some studies, reproduction requires love.
Love of what or whom?
When the source of love becomes an obsession, it can devour a person like a trash-eating cell. A nurturing bond transforms into a fierce battle between lives. For life.
In Tale of Tales (2015), the Queen eats the heart of an albino sea monster to become pregnant. She conveys her desire to “feel life” inside of her. This yearning gives her the volition to do the inconceivable to give birth to a child. Including bargaining a life for a life. Her desire turns to, or is in reality, an obsession.
Twins are born. One to the queen and the other to the housemaid. As teenagers, their closeness angers the queen. The threat of losing the loyalty she expects from her son to his twin is maddening. The queen abases her position as the head of a kingdom to murder the son of a servant.
The Science
When love increases, fear decreases through neurobiological actions in the amygdala. This includes an increase in oxytocin and activation of the dopamine reward system. The queen’s inability to inhibit her violent reactions is rooted in obsession to carry out her duty as a mother and sovereign. This pattern of thinking harms mental health.
But, the heart is where we think of love. The heart is simply a pump with over 2 billion beats over a lifetime. Myocardia have a diverse group of macrophages. The origin of heart macrophages determines their function. Macrophages are meant for protection. Sometimes they see beneficial or harmless agents as detrimental. Exosomes meant to deliver drugs to heal heart conditions are eaten up by phagocytes unless their genes are blocked.
Bottom Line
The duties and obligations of a queen interfere with the love and protection of her son. Which begs the question if the reproduction of her child originated in love or obsession. Protection of the throne or of the loved one? Macrophages ask the same question through receptors and protein signaling. They are meant to protect the throne that is the body, the organ, the heart. It is an automated duty. The difference is that humans are expected to have a higher level of cognitive abilities.
The queen loses her husband and eventually her son. She manifests herself into something so vile, angry and harmful, that her son could see only that form. The bond between twins was stronger than the difference in their maternal and class origins. The queen ate her heart like a macrophage gone awry.
