Is this, or has this really ever been a matter of being in love? I suppose there’s a lot to be said about someone being able to watch you throw yourself in the mud, make all of life’s ridiculous and dangerous mistakes, and still love you when you come out the other side. When people write about how they envision themselves falling in love in a style that would stay true to the movies they’ve adopted their preconceived notions from, have they ever really seen what their own experiences could do for them? I live my life believing that one day i’ll meet a girl, fall in love and then eventually make her my wife (if she decides i’m the boy she’d like to share a foxhole with). But, maybe, just maybe i’ve been going about this whole experience in completely the wrong fashion. Realistically though, who really knows how to go about the act of falling, and being in love properly right? Well, i can tell you one thing from experience, it’s that up until recently, i’ve been going about it in the wrong way. I’ve noticed that being in love doesn’t hit you the moment you wake up, and it’s not always necessarily there when you go to sleep either. So yeah, maybe that’s where you and I will start. Maybe we’ll start talking about all the ways love isn’t, and then maybe, together, we can discover what love truly is.
My earliest recollections of love were fostered by properly timed acoustic ballads, and romantic climax’s from rom-com’s that seamlessly steal that one tear it’s taken an hour and half to convince you it’s deserving of. Hell, even as i write this i have David Gray whispering ways he compares his love to cannonballs and how touching the girl he loves is about as much of a rush as either taking heroin, or just driving really, really fast… i’m not even certain he knows what kind of rush he was going for when he decided to write this lyrics… but i digress, it’s a rush, it’s beautiful and in the words of Ron Burgundy, it’s provocative. So, it was grade 10, sleeping in the basement of my dad’s suburban bungalow, watching television as being the new kid in school didn’t hold many social options to explore. I tended to watch teletoon most nights, as the shows required little thought, yet delivered high on entertainment. This was ideal for a kid who spent most of his intellectual effort defending his own integrity from the constant barrage of insults and snide remarks from his peers. So, teletoon, late nights in my dads basement. That’s where we’ve gotten so far, and that being said, you’d be hard-pressed to find the birth of romance to a 16 year old boy right? Wrong, turns out a perfectly suited dashboard confessional song, and one very sad, yet awkward Abe Lincoln can do it.
Jumping out of my bed to run to the computer, for the simple reason of not forgetting the one line of the song that stood out to me seemed like the end all and be all of my existence. I remember feeling as though if my memory failed me on this one simple task I may as well sign the lease to the closest rock and curl up and die under it. Dramatic right? Wrong, i needed to remember that fucking line.
Actually, you want to know what love is? Love is something that comes at the strangest moments. It comes on airplanes when you can hear an engine fail and reignite, it’s in the turbulence where you see the flight attendant’s face go pale. It’s in all of the moments where life becomes fragile and the only thing that can keep you calm is the idea of being able to see her face again. Loves found in the moments where you find it hard to make sense of things because you’ve drank too much, and you can’t recall your night, but you know that somehow something went right when shes curled up smelling like day old booze beside you wearing nothing but her underwear.
Have you ever seen this fashion of love somewhere in a blockbuster movie? Does the notebook, or blue valentine or any of Ryan Gosling’s recent movie endeavours justify the message i’m trying to get across here? No, i didn’t think so. Does that mean that style of love doesn’t truly exist? Well, that’s neither here nor there, because to be completely honest, i haven’t experienced it, so i’d have to say no, but trust me, if i did, i’d be the first one to let you know that movies are right and that there is that style of love for all who seek it. That being said now though, would if given the option to trade between the style of love i’ve experienced vs. The one that Hollywood markets to its consumers, would i do it? Would i trade my life’s moments, for the prospect of the ones that are said to exist elsewhere? Not a fucking chance. I find love in the strangest places, and i’ve found my love in my scariest moments. That’s how i know it fucking exists, because love isn’t perfect and it isn’t the same reality for everyone. It’s unique, its a fingerprint, its a laugh, its a smell, but my god, it’s beautiful.
I find my love miles away, and beside me simultaneously. I have found it when they brew coffee, or get angry because they’ve managed to take a left turn instead of a right. Ahh, but alas, that’s unique to me is it not? For strangers their love could be found elsewhere, somewhere unique to them because who knows, their life has taken them to different places and into different moments. For instance, my waitress’s dishevelled blouse could be a reflection of her pre-shift quickie shared with her new boyfriend just before she left her apartment. With his adorably placed kisses wishing her a good shift, and his well positioned hands wandering to places where the shirt should be tucked in, and not pulled out. Who knows though right? Hell, she could have just been miserably disorganized or rushed.
Love could be found for some years later than a person would expect it. It could be found in a coffee shop you tend to frequent, when sharing a couple of overused stories with one of the only friends you have left that still have it in them to pull themselves out of bed in the morning. It could be sparked with a chivalrous gesture stemming from a held door, or a pulled chair, with nothing in mind other than to be a generous person. Because that’s who your parents raised you to be. Although that gesture now returned a smile, light conversation, and a date next Thursday to this same coffee shop, but with new stories to tell and another chance at love.
Sometimes I feel like i’m too caught up in love, not with the idea of loving love, but knowing that somehow it’s this endless vault of beautiful stories and tales, that even after centuries of exploration and ran-sacking, it still manages to produce the most interesting parts to my day.
I also tend to think that people, the few you know from work, or the ones you share a class with, who have a negative disposition about them, aren’t simply just ‘angry people,’ they’re actually just people who have either experienced love on a closer level than we have, or are still just naive or innocent to it’s ways. Perhaps they’ve fallen in love with that one person that was put on this earth for them, perhaps they’ve had greater moments of intimacy than we could possibly imagine. Perhaps it was because of a car accident, a deportation, or a sickness that their love was stolen from them? Perhaps they never felt the need to try and be as nice as they once were because everything had turned to distant shades of gray. Perhaps you’re judgement’s misplaced, when in reality you should be spending more time cherishing your loved ones, spending more time with your legs intertwined, and your lips upon their shoulders, than criticizing the people who would trade anything to do the same with theirs.
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