A Life Full of Love

You might have noted that as a writer and a romantic, I have said surprisingly little of what it’s like to be in love. I like to think I am a decent writer, I know this lifestyle blog isn’t exactly the best showcase of that, but generally when it comes to processing and expressing what I’ve learned from life I find that the written word is the best instrument for my song. When it comes to love, however, I do not know where to start. It is too big for me. I have tried crouching at all angles around it to capture a perspective, I have tried focusing in on one small aspect of it and tried like an impressionist to pay little concern to detail and instead make some primative evocation of it… but each and every time I come up blank. When my friends fall in love, I wonder if the degree of separation will help me achieve the art, but even then, even when it is not my heart that is swelling, love is still too big for me.

I say this now because after a year of frankly frivolous fucking, I find my heart sticking to the memory of a stranger and starting to lose all interest in any others. I think I had forgotten what it was like to want just one person, and no others. To look at someone and see right through them, to trust them before really knowing them at all.

Now, love doesn’t have to be forever. Love need not be committed, or promising more than it is (perhaps for others it must be, but that is not how it has struck me). Sometimes it meets you just for a second, to lighten your life and sink away again into the waves. I suppose right now I am playing in that transient, gentle kind of love. And it’s not just bliss – it comes hand in hand with so many inconvenient thoughts and feelings. I find myself wondering if they are wondering about me. I find myself asking if they feel affection, more than lust, if they care that I will go on from here and be happy and fulfilled and well.

I think I will be lucky enough to see this person again before our chapter ends, I am hopeful. But when it does end, when we go on to live through all the other colours of our humanity, I hope this person is graced with kindness, growth, health and love. I hope they think of me sometimes, not too much, but perhaps every now and then as the sun sets behind that last sip of wine, or they meet somebody else who reminds them that life is so bursting with this feeling. I hope they know I will remember them too, sometimes. I think when we fall in love a little bit, it’s like there is another life created where you stay with them. In that world there is another Emily who lives here on this sunny island, driving around on a motorbike (because perhaps she doesn’t have FND), and swimming in the sea, making love in vineyards and on the caldera, learning a language. I’m not sad I don’t get to be her, the person I will get to be will be wonderful, but it is nice to meet her just for now, to wave to her from across the universe – steal a toothless smile and wish her well.

Fucking is fabulous, don’t get me wrong, but Dostoevsky didn’t break my hearts with characters that had good orgasms with people they hardly thought of again. This is why I love life… for the sparkles on the water, for the first touch of nervous hands desperate to hold each other, for little loves littered over a lifetime, for the wild Aegean sea.