It's been nearly two months since I found myself swept up in the first throes of love. Learned a lot of things that I am going to try to voice here. Let's see how accurate I can be, as we know I can sometimes use too many words.
When I decided on New Year's Eve that this would be the year for me to find love, I put myself completely into the universe's hands. I didn't put any qualifications on the form this love would come in, because that has never been important to me.
What was important to me was that this be a love I could feel head to toe, skin to soul. I wasn't looking for superficial or to settle. I wanted it all.
Of course, the universe always has its own plans, which usually culminate in a celestial foot kicking over the Jenga-game that is your life, shouting "Fuck Yo Plans".
(Sidebar: if that game isn't a near-perfect metaphor for life, I don't know what is.)
So the Universe decided that sending me love, a final kind of love, a heart-stopping, love-song singing, body-grooving, soul-growing kind of love, out of the damn blue, would be a perfect present.
And I am so very grateful.
Even though I don't know where I stand in the relationship.
To have someone tell you they love you, pretty much answering your prayers in the process, and simultaneously tell you that you need to move on from them...it's a bit of a mind fuck. My heart was all "I want to dance!!!!" And my brain was like "wait, what?"
I'm still dizzy. Maybe a bit manic. Absolutely, positively crazy. Because I've spent the time since that fateful message, sending texts and poems and some e-cards, and Pablo Neruda quotes, and pictures, and voicemails, and videos, to try to get him to open back up.
It doesn't matter that the response has been nearly nothing. That's not the point.
The point, dear reader, is that love isn't the way they show it in the movies. Yes, you might have the archetypical "meet-cute", bumbling into each other's lives by cosmic happenstance. And you might actually FEEL your heart go "sigh! There he is!" (Insert heart-eyed emoticon). You might find that all the songs you hear and ever heard about love seem to ring eerily true. You might find yourself scribbling his name next to yours all over notebooks and giggling profusely whenever anything reminds you of your beloved...
But, in real life, even with all of that, you have to face the reality of what it means to be in a relationship. You may find that the sheer size of your love may send someone skittering to their safe space, far away from you. You may start to wonder if you are in fact a crazy person, running behind someone who is in no hurry to be caught...
Then you remember the moments. The beautiful moments when it was just the two of you, new to it all, basking in the wonderment of each other. Giggling and embracing and just glowing at each other.
The beautiful and infinite seconds where reality doesn't dwell, where only romance lives, and it is amazing. It is perfect. It is everything.
There is so much to believe in, just knowing he exists. So that, even the short time we had, will haunt my life forever.
While I give chase, others try to enter my life. I deflect because there is no comparison between my beloved and them. It's like being shown what's inside of a rainbow and then returning to the world of harsh whites and grays. I understand that, sometime in the very distant future, I may end up settling for companionship's sake.
For now, however, I dream best when I dream of love that could be, could grow, could unlock the very best of me, could build and strengthen who I am and who he is and who we could be together.
I recall every moment of my life where I felt less in a relationship, and I replace them with him. Laughing and singing in the shower, learning to dance and walking on the beach holding hands. Climbing hills and carving trees. Making love and birthing babies...
There is so much I want to do. With him. For him.
That's the part of loving that the movies get wrong. To be in love is to be vulnerable to the wily beast. To step into it's cage unsure of whether the beast will be tame, or be wild. You may end up bloody. Devoured. Haunted. Extinguished...
Or.
Be blessed.
L.
