A Few Lessons From Love

I first fell in love with N in late April. We had taken a table closest to the window and the breeze was warm. He had turned to look at me after I had taken a sip of his wine, and the way he looked at me with his deep-brown eyes, his eyes which, not in this lifetime, could I forget, and it left me with a feeling that I could not explain to you, but I knew that I was in love with him, and after we kissed goodnight and I walked away, I turned back to see him watching me, waiting for me, until I was out of sight, and in that time I could not imagine a life without him. This was on our first date. There is no right time for love, only that it comes so suddenly, and to fight it would be a loss. There is no surer feeling than love.

When N and I fought, we fought mercilessly. We were belittling, ruthless, shouting over each other, violent at times, but never once saying what we meant, and once they had been said, they had been said and could never be undone. Love, when it can no longer be contained, endows us with a sense of entitlement, it makes us feel as though we own the other and have the right to do as we please, however cruel and unkind. Love and cruelty together is toxic. Three, four, twelve, twenty times I had screamed at him, swearing at him until I felt only empty, and after, I could not recognize that person that I had been, often I was terrified of myself, but always did I feel that I was no longer inside my body. For every time that we made love, I felt this way too, unable to recognize my insatiability and feeling as though I had left my body, that I could go on endlessly making love to him. In love, often we become changed people. This can be a good thing; it can be a bad thing.

The first time, the only time I told N that I loved him was when I knew that I would lose him. It had been eight months since I knew that I loved him and we were in the middle of an argument, when, forced to give him an answer, I had nothing to tell him but the truth, and the truth was that I loved him. He said nothing. There is nothing more painful than love that is withheld. Should they be loved in your heart, never deny one of love
I had waited eight months to tell N that I loved him, and then never again. There is no right time for love; have I said this before? If you feel love, show it. Say it. Kiss them gently and tell them slowly. Enunciate each word so that they believe it, so that you know it for yourself. The worst thing that could come of it is that you loved.

Two people in love become selfless. Often I slept an hour in a day so that I could talk to N. He drove hours to see me, and then, at the end of the day, he drove hours back to his home. We wanted only each other, to be in each other’s presence at all times. I felt guilt when I enjoyed my life without him, and I stopped living my life because I was without him. This love is dangerous. Love is not erode away a life but that which allows us to become our best possible selves. Love is to build and make each other stronger. When we were our better selves, we pushed each other to work hard, to recognize our own potential. That is why I am writing this.

The last time I saw N, we could have killed each other, it was another April and it was sunny and the cold had broken and I had realized that this was the man I had fallen in love with so suddenly on an April. I couldn’t lose him, not yet, not when we had so many places to go and so much to do together, not when summer was close approaching and we had been waiting and dreaming of that summer. I begged for him to say because I had never loved a man the way that I had loved him; he was the first man I knew that I had loved. Love can make us cruel, have I said this too? As he began drive away, I ran after him until I no longer could, and then for months I could not run. One night, when it was too cold and I had stopped waking up in the middle of the night crying for him, when I could sleep in my bed and think of many things before I could think of him, he told me that he loved me. Sometimes, in love, it’s just too late.

Often, in love, we end up hurting the one we love the most.