I think of myself as a person who falls in love easily. I do fall in love easily, but falling in love is one of those expressions that means different things to different people. Perhaps I refer to the potential for love more so than love itself, for love is complicated. And I think it is enduring - even when relationships end.
But I say I fall in love all the time, because I do. I feel I have fallen in love with book characters, movie characters, musicians and singers, authors and artists, strangers on the bus to whom I have not spoken, and I am not sure what I really mean when I say that. Can one be in love with a fiction? An intangible? Can one be in love with someone with whom one has no relationship?
Though I fall in love easily, I have only had two of those of those kinds of loves that fit society's rules, the kind that come with long lasting relationships. Commitments and promises. One of them did not last. One of them has lasted.
My first love was Shawn, who eventually I married, but not until after I met, loved, and broke up with the second love, T.
T was actually the one I thought would last forever. And somehow he turned out to be even more fictional than a character in a novel, but I do not know how this happened. Perhaps he was never who I thought he was at all. Or perhaps he changed into someone else. Or perhaps I did. Any combination of these could be true, and to be fair I am certain I disappointed him too.
A few years ago he got married. And divorced. And recently he became engaged, and again split. And I am surprised by my own reaction to these pieces of news because if I truly loved him I should be sorry to hear of these things, shouldn't I? But during his divorce I found it impossible not to laugh at his exasperated Facebook status posts about his ex-wife stealing his car and kidnapping his dog. And this time I guess I am just thinking it serves him right for trying to be happy in this world without me.
It proves that one should not maintain contact with one's ex-lovers. And it proves that I have a tight knot of cruelty right beneath my collarbone. And it proves that love is not always really love.
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3 comments:
A very human reaction, I think.
I have a bad habit of keeping old lovers in my life.
I am glad it strikes you as a human reaction; it just struck me as cruel, but maybe cruelty is part of being human. I have (potential) contact with a number of old lovers, but almost never intentionally. It's as though I know better, but still cannot escape. And like the rain, I love it and hate it simultaneously.
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