Because yesterday was Valentine’s Day, I’ve been thinking about the boys and men (real and imagined) I loved in the past.
NOTE: I’m using “love” loosely. At different times in my life, love meant something different to me, so when I say I was “in love” with someone, I was — because that’s what I considered love to be at the time.
Sweeping, all-consuming obsession. That’s how love felt when I was a kid, and my very first love was a boy who came to my school in the second grade. Looking back, I understand why he appealed to me. He had some traits in common with my dad, and true to psychology and gross adages, I was a little girl who thought my future husband would be someone like my dad. Second Grade Boy was tall, had dark hair, and wore glasses — the main things that defined “man” for me at the time. Fortunately, I don’t regret my heart strings being pulled in his direction. He was (and likely still is) a genuinely good guy. And at the end of high school, he was pretty hot.
But I wasn’t with him in high school. High school was when I was hit with other loves, again sweeping, all-consuming obsessions.
I thought of myself as a coquette then, even though I had no real experience with dating or relationships. (Second Grade Boy was “my boyfriend” a couple times, but I was too immature to be comfortable with it.) So my tendency to tease was the running joke — that I had this revolving door of crushes and was going to be the type of woman who could never settle down.
Junior year, a handshake. Electric. As a naive 16-year old, I thought I found the love of my life on the school’s staff. And it was everything you can imagine and a lot of things you can’t. It took me years — 13 if we’re counting — to process that “relationship” and understand what I thought about my life because of it.
I said I was in love then.
Again, an operational definition of love based on time-specific context.
Would I say now that I truly loved him?
That’s still up for debate. Because the thing is, when you’ve said, “I love you,” to someone, and then you decide you really didn’t love them, what does that mean about your life? What does it mean about love?
I am in love now. It’s sweeping, ever-present. My current love changed my life, and I changed his. We’re partners in building life — our shared life and our individual journeys. When I say, “I love you,” I’m saying it because it means something to me. I can’t explain what it means, but I know it’s something I’m grateful for.
I’m grateful for all loves, at all points, whether they were “real” or not. Emotion is powerful, and it shapes what we do. It’s the unspoken force behind the different courses our lives take. Sometimes, love takes us to really good places. Other times, we slog through a lot of shit for it and only find good long beyond the aftermath.
I can’t tell you exactly where my current love is taking me, but my gut tells me it’s going to be somewhere good.
Whether you’re currently loving someone (or more than one person or just yourself), I want you to think about this.
How has love shaped the path(s) you took? Is love leading you somewhere now?