How To Fall In Love Over And Over Again

They say you fall in love only once. They say love is about seeing stars, dancing on the clouds and hearing the melody of your heart. They say love is about finding parts of your soul in another. They say love is about the light that dispels your darkness. They say love is a passion, an emotion built on trust and stability. They say a lot more.

Alas I don’t agree with them!

Ever since I fell in love with words so many years back, I have fallen in and out, more than once. This love has been marked by moments of hatred, sprinkled with instances of doubt. At times I have felt I don’t know these words, at others they have betrayed me when I needed them the most. The bursts of passion have been interluded with months of absence. They left me in the middle of the night and stayed away for days, like an unfaithful lover. They refused to listen to my pleas and come back into my heart. They stabbed me time and again by coming out in fractions, broken little pieces, which hurt the ones who read, and I the one who writes. Yet I always forgive them, when they crawl back and caress my cheeks, I welcome them. When they flow out of my pen and slide gently onto the paper, I marvel at their beauty.

I fall in, I fall out, but we remain.

This love isn’t about the clouds, it doesn’t stir up melodies in my heart. It is as much as about the darkness as it is about the light. It is as much about the torn pieces of paper, the blotted letters never sent, the greeting cards that have lost their meaning, as it is about the moments of inspiration, the nano seconds of magic, when the confusions melt away like a ball of snow. It is as much about the words which stabbed, along with the words that comforted.

They say love is about finding parts of your soul in another. I have found myself in not one, but many of these words. Not just the parts which people find “sensible”. Not just the parts based on logic and reasoning and rational dreams. But the parts which cannot be explained. The stories which cannot be told. The emotions which cannot be described. Not only mine, but of so many others. People I’m most likely never to meet, people who exist only in fiction yet feel more real than the air which surrounds me, people who belong to me like the beats of my heart.

They say love is about trust and stability. No, I don’t trust these words and their ability to make things right always. I have seen them get misunderstood, I have seen the lies twisted to appear like the truth. They don’t make me feel safe. They scare me, these words. They ignite a fire in my mind and drag me towards the precarious places, the crestfallen faces. They tempt me to dream unrealistic dreams, they bring back memories I wish to forget. The engulf me sometimes and make me forget who I am, they rob me of my mundane identity and make me feel a sense of power. They make me bring alive goodness and peace which exists only on paper. And mostly, mostly, they make me believe that someday, these very words that I write will reach another, and ignite in them a similar flame. They make me dream a dream where the realities will be different, where the fiction and the truth will collide.

Yes, I have hated these words more than I can say. But I have also loved them. And I hope I have made them right.