Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.... Love takes hostages. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness.... It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
Neil Gaiman
(1960-)
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
W.H. Auden
(1907-1973)
I hold it true, whatever befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(1809-1892)
Ultimately, I agree with Lord Tennyson. I do count myself lucky to have loved and I don't really understand how a love like this ends. To me, it seems unimaginable. But apparently it happens. Still, better to have loved. And painful as it has been (and sometimes still is) to learn to live without it, I have found it can be done, and I can't bring myself to regret it. Or to settle for less.
I do still believe in love.
But what if we are granted only one love like this in a lifetime and I've had mine? I'm just wondering.
It's the time of year for reflection...
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10 comments:
good question at the end... it's a scary thought but i think love is possible again.. because love is not exclusive. been feeling reflective these days myself..
i think the capacity for one person to re-open themselves and truly love another after they had a bitter taste of love in their mouth, is true greater love. I think as a person, we're all capable of having more than one soul mates or great loves in our lifetime. We are changing beings and for each phase of our lives we require different partners to accompany us, only a few are lucky to have found that one partner that is able to change with them.
i don't believe that there is only one soulmate out there. whenever i used to believe that, i would come across someone even better suited, and i was so grateful that i was free to go on a new adventure with them.
a new love is not only possible but probable...you'll see! :)
it just gets better. have no regrets.
I think life is pretty amazing, sometimes.
And things turn out not always as planned or even as you imagine it will be. It can take unexpected twists and turns. Good things often happen when you're not looking out for them, they just take you by surprise.
Or so it seems to me.
Well that's how I see it tonight anyway.
I particularly like the first quote. It's not one I'm familiar with, in the sense of having read it before. But it's one I can understand where he comes from.
I hope the New Year brings some of what you're looking for.
...I don't know anything but I do know that love is the most painful thing outside of pushing a baby out of a tiny place. Love will catch you off guard, move right in and sit on you hard! You become vulnerable all over again, you know and somehow it's worth it...I think you, in all of your sweetness and loveable- ness would be quite a target for that stinging arrow. Love many all at the same time- that should lessen the sting of loss, I really should take my own advice sometimes-.
I could write an essay for you because I find myself agreeing with all three authors and with none of them all at the same time.
I believe in love but I also belive in soul mates and I know deep down inside of me that there really is only one soul mate that is truly yours. There is a significant difference between these two entities yet they are so often merged. For me a soul mate connection is love on another level.
I never belived this before. I thought that many possible suitors were there somewhere and that it could work if you made the choice for it to work. But life taught me differently...
Thanks everyone for your always thoughtful and heartfelt responses. Your faith in second-time 'round love and my chances of finding it is much appreciated. I know it happens. I just hope I'm one of the lucky ones - again. But if I'm not, it's not the most awful thing in the world. I am lucky anyway. :)
Claire, I was writing my response as you were posting yours... I can't agree that there is only one person in the world for everyone - relies too much on fate, faith, almost impossible odds that we'd meet in a population of billions - but I do believe there is a very limited pool of potential soulmates. I do agree that loving someone and finding a soulmate are not necessarily the same thing. For nearly 20 years, I believed my love was my soulmate but I was wrong about other things so perhaps I was wrong about that too. I don't know anymore. I don't trust my own judgement as much anymore. Now, I kinda hope he wasn't. I guess time will tell... :o)
What life taught me was that what I thought was a soul mate, was in reality not the real thing. It was only when I opened myself up to learning and allowed life and God to teach me what the true meaning of soul mate is, that I was able to find it. And every day more meaning unfolds... My paryer is that you will be open to learn and to be taught.
xox
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