Dear Diary: Falling in Love after Failing in Love
This collection of feelings is not for everyone, it is for those that have been single for so long but finally decided to try again, those that have finally arrived in a person called home after a dry spell and after a painful journey of heartbreak. Congratulations but let me quickly add, the work has just begun.
As I sat on my couch one afternoon basking in the glory of my newfound happiness, I started thinking about what it felt like to fall in love after failing in love and I came to the following conclusions:
Falling in love after a dry spell is harder than the dry spell. Previously you only had yourself to deal with but now someone else’s sadness and happiness matters next to your own. Often you will find yourself wondering if it’s too soon to feel or say the words I love you, you will instead say I really like you repeatedly because saying I love you too soon might scare your new lover so you hold back.
It is deciding not to call or see your lover when deep down you are aching to see them every waking moment, but you don’t want to be the clingy partner, so you give them space.
It is wanting to shower them with gifts but holding back because it’s too soon to buy them a car just 3 weeks into the relationship! it’s too soon to ask questions such as whether they see themselves building a life with you; perhaps it’s safer to ask whether they are looking for someone to build a life with or someone to just kick it with.
It is not wanting to tell people about your new partner, not because you are embarrassed by them but if they ever leave, no one must know that yet again you have added another one to your string of failed relationships. Despite your fears, you hope they stay long enough to create the kind of memories that erase the memories you made before them.
It is constantly reminding yourself that they are not the men/women before them, they are not the relationships that hurt and ended. It is fighting triggers and stepping out of yourself to see your old patterns of thinking creeping up on you while you fight tooth and nail to save this relationship from yourself.
It is revealing parts of yourself slowly; while you want to be seen in all your glory and loved for who you are, what if you really bare your soul and they really see you but leave anyway. Isn’t that everybody’s greatest fear in love.
It is that giddy feeling of falling in love; it feels like that first breath you took after almost drowning. You impatiently gasp for more and more air but at the back of your mind you are traumatized by the thought of how you nearly died!
It is a level headedness that you never quite had before a broken heart, a silent but lingering fear borne from an understanding that this might work or it might not but that’s okay because now you know that hearts can break and heal simultaneously.
It is a desperate prayer telling God of how you are tired of starting over, you want to ask him to let me keep this one but you know better so if he/she stays then great but if he/she leaves then you will love again- like you are doing now. You will feel the heady exhilaration of a new love and all those butterflies again and again, until you find the one to grow old with, even if its when you are already old in age but not in love.
Other times its remembering when you got married 11 years ago, how in love you were, how somehow over the years things changed and you almost lost your spouse, but you remembered in the nick of time how much they mean to you, so you course correct.
Sometimes its falling for someone new while fighting it because you promised your deceased spouse that you would love them forever yet here you are finding warmth in the smile of another; falling in love again feels like betraying the one you once loved.
Other times its thinking ‘‘gosh! This is so hard, it was easier with my ex’’ but it really wasn’t, eventually this too gets easier if only you give this a fair chance.
It is falling in love when you know better so you do better; you communicate more openly and honestly, certain things don’t matter as much as they once did because after many tries you realize that perfect people don’t exist.
It is regret, knowing you had someone wonderful in the past and the person before you now could be just as wonderful, so you try not to mess up, but you instead end up overcompensating.
It is realizing you may need or still need therapy.
It is lying next to him, staring up at the ceiling while he asks, ‘‘what are you thinking of Yvonne?’’ and I say, ‘’us’’.
He responds ‘‘what about us’’ and I say ‘‘I am wondering what the future holds for us’’
He finally says ‘‘I can tell you; we will still kiss as passionately as we do after 50’’.
