Fairy tales don't chronicle real people. They may be based on some vestige of truth, but the stories are fake. Movies try a little harder sometimes to make love believable. They try to create characters that we recognize... people we can identify with. And then they use a series of lifelike situations to bring these people together and make them fall in love, fight it, get into a quarrel, and then realize that they can't live without each other.
Real life rarely happens that way.
But when it does, it's difficult to comprehend.
When love grabs you by the hair and drags you along for a ride, you don't always understand why.
When it hits you like a shotgun to the face (as my friend Jamin so eloquently puts it), you are left reeling.
A few months ago, I knew that I was falling in love. At the time, it felt odd and I attributed it to infatuation. A few weeks ago, I realized that I was, indeed, in love. Not just infatuated. Not just freshly enamored. Actually in love as never before.
But I didn't say anything, didn't do anything about it.
Until last Friday night. It was Christmas, and my K.i.S.A. was telling me how wonderful I was. At this point, I had been waiting to tell him that I loved him. Waiting for him to say it first, or for some sort of sign from heaven. But he kept saying these things about me, as if I were some sort of saint. I felt bad. I felt unjustified. So I had to clear the air. "I don't do these things for just anyone," I said, after several false starts. "I do them because I'm in love with you."
I think it scared him and he didn't really know what to say. I knew at the time that he wasn't ready to tell me that he loved me, nor did I expect him to. I just wanted him to know.
We said goodbye that night and didn't mention it again. I wasn't hurt, you should know. I knew that I had said what was on my heart and I was happy with my choice. I wasn't trying to manipulate him or push him into saying something he wasn't ready to say. I was just speaking the truth.
Tonight, I knew that he loved me. I knew it before he said it. Before the words escaped his lips, I knew. As we said goodbye, his face took on a pallor which worried me. I made him sit down. He looked sick, and confused, and scared, and dizzy. He said he'd never felt this way before.
I looked into his eyes and knew.
And then the words passed his lips, breaking on their way out. "I love you."
For a moment, I thought I was dreaming. Indeed, I had dreamed of that moment so many times that I couldn't believe it when it really happened. In fact the first word out of my mouth was "Really?" because I couldn't fathom it being true.
And then I started to cry.
Why did I start to cry? Why did tears and laughter mix in my throat and create a clinging, gasping breath? Why did I feel like the world was ending in that one moment?
With those three words, I felt free. Free to love and be loved.
These moments need to be chronicled for 2 main reasons: First, that someday I will have a son or daughter who asks me what it felt like to be freshly in love. I will have something to point them to... the remnants of a time when I felt what they feel then.
And second, because the day will come when I myself will forget how it was. The day will come when I will be angry, or tired, or frustrated, and I will wonder how I ever fell in love.
And then this will be here, to remind me. This will exist to tell me not to give up. To jog my memory and reawaken that first love.
So then these words, written early in the morning immediately after the event, are the most potent. These words are the truth, as raw as it comes.
We live.
1 comment:
I can't recall reading anything so beautiful. Never lose this.
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