This Is How It Feels To Fall Too Fast

I don’t mean to. I really don’t. Every time I tell myself it’ll be different. I tell myself that I’ll be different. But it never is. I never am. In my defense, it’s hard to turn off a part of you, a piece of your personality, that hopeless romantic within you. And for those of you who aren’t hopeless romantics, I know you may be shaking your head and telling yourself that hopeless romantics simply need to get a grip on reality. Well I’m here to tell you that it’s truly not that simple.

Wherever you are and whatever you do, you never do it with the purpose of meeting a significant other. You’re simply living life, just like the next person. However, while you go about your life, you will inevitably run into others. And one of those others might just happen to have a smile that could make you melt into a puddle and a laugh that is so ridiculously contagious, all belonging to one incredibly handsome man.

You start talking to him. Because why wouldn’t you? He just introduced himself to you and he’s getting more adorable by the minute. And you instantly get overwhelmed by all the possibilities and the newness of it all. You imagine all the adventures you could have together and the paths that you could journey down with this amazing person. And you do realize that you just met him for the first time, but you can’t even help picturing the two of you together taking on the world one experience and adventure at a time.

After you leave him right where you met him, you can’t help the fact that he consumes every waking moment of your thoughts days after and then continues to push his way into your subconscious dreams. You catch yourself smiling just thinking about him as you go about your day. You recall his beautiful smile and the way he stood there, confident and casual, lighting up the room.

But the worst part of it all? He’s not yours. He’s not even close to yours. He’s simply just this small fragment of a memory that you’re holding onto. You’re holding on, not because you’re desperate for love or lonely or in need of a companion but because he was different. Because he made you feel something that you’ve been wandering through life waiting to feel. And you understand that you barely know him, and that you just met him, but your mind is racing far ahead of reality, because there’s this small flicker of hope inside of you that maybe, just maybe this will work.

But while you sit there daydreaming of a possible future with him, you have no idea exactly how he feels. You have no idea if he was sincere when he extended an invitation for a date or if you’re simply a fading memory being lost and forgotten about as simply and easily as he introduced himself to you. Days pass and you’re still grasping onto that fragment of hope, not in a desperate way, but in a hopeful, determined way wondering if he’s going to reach out to you. You could easily reach out to him yourself, but because you’re you, you’re afraid of coming off as desperate or needy. So you play the waiting game. But he’s worth the agonizing wait. Because what you felt when you were with him was different, it was real. And you’re hoping that maybe something magical will transpire of out of this.

But when days trickle by and it’s all but radio silence, you finally have to blow out that glimmer of hope, and let go. Letting go of a man that wasn’t even yours in the first place, but a man that you hoped so badly would be. A man that stole your heart and imagination and ran away with it. A man that never will be.

All of this from a five minute conversation. You must think hopeless romantics need a reality check. And honestly, we probably do. When time and again we’re left with an unfulfilled ending. Where it feels like we’ve raced to the top of a set of stone steps only to look down and realize that they’re crumbling from beneath our feet.

Call it naivety or simple stupidity that I get my hopes up so high only to have them come crashing down. You think I’d learn that it would be easier to understand that love doesn’t work that way. That I have to learn to meet someone and walk away. Leave them in the past, exactly where I met them, no feelings or emotions attached.

By holding onto hopeless romantic tendencies, maybe one day, I can prove reality wrong, that sometimes, meeting someone and falling for them does work in your favour. Those fleeting glances and sideways smiles will in fact evolve into something beautiful, something lasting, something amazing.