LASTING
“Love is an ugly, terrible business practiced by fools. It’ll trample your heart and leave you bleeding on the floor. And what does it really get you in the end? Nothing but a few incredible memories that you can’t ever shake. The truth is there’s gonna be other girls out there. I mean, I hope, but I’m never gonna get another first love. That one’s always gonna be her.”
Lines from a movie, no doubt. Little Manhattan follows a boy of ten in his first encounter with love. Adorable, highly engaging, and more over, relatable. Watched it a few years back, jotted down the above quote in a desire to expand on it, and am only now doing so.
Was thinking about the last time I fell in love. So fast, so tightly bonded. One night he stated, “I’m almost in love with you.” I replied, “Wait, let me catch up,” to which he countered, “Too late,” and we were then together near everyday after.
It’s so sad. We often lose the recollection of love. Our hearts callus over in a protective layer of self preservation against pain and the lights that so brightly shone for another are forever dimmed, as though they never even were. A blausee attitude sets in. In part, that’s the natural order of humanity, if not dwelt on, the pain seeps away as part of the healing process and the accompanying memories fade. A saving grace to the trampled heart and blood on the floor. Someone was once the sun and the moon, the earth and the sky, and every good thing in between. And then … they’re not.
I’ve been watching the evolution of many a friend’s marriage as time marches on, and I’ve gotta say, for the most part, I find it all very encouraging. This love thing. Yet, I regularly hear a call from both parties to do more, to be more, to give and to take … more. Though I speak from the outside of love at the moment, I’ve learned that when in want from the other, in giving away what we desire, we receive- if not what we were in want of, at the very least, what we need. After all, though not an entirely romantic idea, romantic love is not meant to complete you (sorry, Maguire), but rather, to complement. It’s not that I forgot, just that I was reminded. Thought it’d be nice, right and proper, to remind a few others as well. You know, in keeping the ugly and terrible to a minimum in this business practiced by fools. Love does tend to offer up the most incredible and unshakeable memories, so, if you possess it, revel in it, and if you still await it, keep at it, it remains worth the time spent in expectancy.
I may never have another first love, but I will have a last love and I’m counting on it to carry me through the ages.
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