I’m a sucker for love stories. I’m easily touched by those sentimental, dramatic, beautiful, suffered love stories. Impossible love affairs. Sweep-you-off-your-feet style things. Soul-mates kind of encounters. I also really like the happy-normal couple’s special love stories, although these are not so great as book, song or movie themes, they are a little treasure that those other novel-like stories make easier to appreciate and value.
In a world of so much randomness, I find comfort in my faith in love, and more importantly in my faith in the ability of people to love.
I think love is something you grow. I think love is something you “think”, and not just something you “feel”. I think love is built, and can be demolished just like a house, slowly through the years, when the little cracks and signs of wear don’t get taken care of, or swiftly and suddenly when something stronger than it can sustain sweeps by it, hurricane or fire like.
Lately, as I’ve been getting older and reaching the end of my 20’s, I’ve been getting more and more conscious of something rather new. The thing with getting older, extending your own history, buiding things, and relationships, is that the more and better you have, and the better and more likely the pospects feel, the more afraid you start to feel of loosing it. If in the past I worried that I would never find love with someone, that I would never get my health back, that I would never find something to feel driven by professionaly (and otherwise), and so on, when I’m at that point, finally, I start to feel anguished at the thought of loosing it, like, you know, “now that I was finally enjoying it, something comes and fucks it up?”.
When you have nothing you feel like shit. You want to have what you see others having (and enjoying). Or you want what you see others are not having, but you hope you can somehow, someday, have. Then you have it and you like it and you want more (intensity or time of it). And as you get what you want you become more and more self-conscious of how fucking lucky you are in this almost 7 billion people world of ours. And then you’ll start dragging around with you this little dark, heavy shadow that constantly reminds you that good things don’t last forever (for the same reason that bad ones don’t do either). But then you think that there are always exceptions to make the rule. What if you are that exception? And if so, will you be it regardless of if or how you try or not?
For a long time I felt something like the “last of the mohicans”, like there’s no one else left (or in sight) from my tribe. It’s such an overwhelming, completely shattering feeling it brings tears to my eyes just remembering those years. A soul consuming feeling of having no future, and of having no one that shares your past. Now I sometimes shudder just thinking of loosing that person. It would feel like watching and feeling having your heart ripped off your chest, beating.
Some people argue that (“true”?) love is a vicious thing, something to avoid because of all the misery it can (or will, definitely, eventually) bring you. So they constantly run away from it, or just settle with the most convenient ersatz at hand (“fake” love?) fooling themselves there will never be anything truly better to look for. I have never supported such views. Pain is very much measured against a kind of moving referential. I never felt willing to settle. If “true” love can really bring down on you so much heartache, grief, pain, it must be because it can also bring you something simply… awsome. Something so extraordinary, so amazingly fulfilling that its withdrawal can leave you feeling at such a profound loss it becomes almost unbearable. Like if what you had was so special, so hard to find, so unique, so lengthy to built that nothing will ever replace it, something that makes experiencing life without it feel like a brutal downgrade, like an ex-cocaine addict trying to enjoy sex or other ehxilarating things of human life and feeling that not even those compare slightly with life on cocaine rushes.
I always wanted, I hoped, to experience something great enough to change me, to take me wonderful places I would not go alone, to lead me to do things I never felt capable of, to fulfill me in a way I would be awakened to a new world of possibilities, of wonder, of dreaming, of peace. Some people find purpose in fairy tales, I found purpose in love.
This is a public re-declaration of my love and commitment to the love of my life, Bruno, today, on our 9th anniversary of togetherness. 🙂 Despite everything else going on, all the bad stuff, the self-doubt, the weakness, the despair, the hopelessness, the many failures and frustrations, the last 9 years have been the best years of my life. Good enough to completely overshadow the lousy previous 20. Just because you were part of it. You keep pulling me away from the darkness, you make me want to chase and enjoy the sun, with you. And hence you make and keep me happy, you, “the only who’s ever known who I am, who I’m not and who I wanna be”. Sweetheart, I love you.
