Love is a Strange Game

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So, in an effort to clear my mind and start the new year afresh, I need to blog about something that happened to me last year. Perhaps it's my diehard optimism and hope which never dies, or maybe it's my watching of Downton Abbey's romantic wedding episode that has me all stirred up. Whatever the reason, I am moved to write this down today.

"As long as you walk the earth, I could never be happy with anyone else." This is what Matthew says to his dear Mary. This is a sentiment we are not all lucky to have been able to experience in our lives. It's definitely amazing to meet someone with whom you connect Matthew-Mary style. Someone who takes your breath away the minute you meet them. Someone with whom you immediately can imagine growing old. And, even if it doesn't work out with this person, if you are an optimist like me, you always dream it will. You always believe in the truth of the feeling, the click. And you pine for it.

Then, at some point, you realize that you need to let it go. You must leave it. If you do not, you will be stuck in a sort of purgatory, forever.

What do you do? How do you do it? In the words of the immortal Beegees, how can you mend a broken heart?

Well, first off, it helps to acknowledge that it's just a feeling. It's a feeling that you can live without. It also helps to tell yourself that if it's meant to be, it still might. As long as that doesn't leave you pining. If it makes you pine to think there's still a chance, then make sure you imagine there is none. No chance. Nada. Zilch. Done.com. Donezarilla. Kaput. (think I've tried this approach?)

You might even come to question if it was an obssession, rather than a love. Then, you might pick up a book or two on obssessive love and scare yourself. But then you also might read M. Scott Peck's  "The Road Less Traveled" and realize that what happened, what really, truly happened was that you fell in "infatuation." The relationship stalled there, in the honeymoon phase. It was, therefore, idealized because it was just that: ideal...it was all pink clouds and unicorns. It was the stuff of myths.

It was not real. It didn't get to become real. It was preemptively stopped from maturing into a grown-up love. It stays there on the pages of your life, a sighing teenager...an irrepressible crush...hopefully waiting for a future grown-up love to come along and make it feel inferior in comparison.

So, I turn the page. I move on. I leave the sighing, mooning teen behind, embarassed that it even came to that. To believe there is no hope is the only way. There cannot be. There must not be. If hope still exists, that stupid pining will continue and it cannot. Not this year.