My 8 year old nephew drew “The Feeling of Love” for me last year. I couldn’t stop looking at it, and then asked him to describe that feeling for me. He said, “It’s like when two people are looking at each other from a distance but they can’t be together right now. The person in the airplane is dropping the rose to the person on the ground to show that the distance doesn’t matter.” I framed the drawing, and still think about his description just about every day.
I’ve felt love for long term boyfriends, but I’ve never fallen in love. Meaning, I’ve never felt that all-consuming, moving in parallel, I’d do absolutely anything for you, I melt when I look at you love. I’ve come so very close, but then things end before I fall. I have a lot of sources of love in my life that I’m incredibly grateful for—family, friends, my dog. I feel deep love for the cosmos, books, nature, music, travel, art, etc. It’s not lost on me that it’s really something special to have so many people, places, and things to love. But maybe I’m greedy because I still have this longing to experience deeply romantic love. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jeff Buckley lately, and he has this live performance of his song “Grace”. He says the song is about “Not feeling so bad about your own mortality when you have true love.” My older sister always says that falling in love is one of the greatest experiences in life—that there’s nothing like it. So I mean, of course I have a desire for that experience. Even if it only happens once.
I used to act like being in love didn’t matter to me because I had other things to care about. I thought it was enough to have an attractive boyfriend giving me attention and all the other fun things that a surface-level relationship offers. That’s probably a large part of the reason why I haven’t fallen in love. Pretending like I didn’t care about it meant that I wasn’t accepting or owning that part of myself. The very important part that actually wants to be seen, understood, accepted, and deeply loved by a partner. Inadvertently, I closed myself off to falling in love by acting like it didn’t matter. The guys I attracted matched that frequency. I’m not sure if they didn’t care about falling in love, but I do think they were also hiding—or not admitting to—certain things. Two people who aren’t willing to admit their individual wants and/or needs to themselves—or each other—probably aren’t going to fall in love anytime soon.
So for the record, to the Universe and anyone else who’s reading this, I would love to fall in love. I would love to fall in love with a guy who would look down at me from an airplane and drop a rose as reassurance that the distance doesn’t matter. I would love to fall in love with a guy that makes it possible to not feel so bad about my own mortality because we have true love. I would love to fall in love with a guy who has the capacity to see, understand, accept, and deeply love me exactly as I am.
