To look at you clearly, calmly, and say “I don’t know if I’m in love with you” was one of the most difficult yet frivolous truths I have dared to utter in my life.
I didn’t know that I didn’t know, and yes, I didn’t know. I had not been in that position and had not known the advent of love so many times that I could vehemently acknowledge its presence.
I did what the rest of the world does, with the same cluelessness that movies and TV shows cultivate, the one with big words and big promises, waiting for music from the heavens to play and for passion that engulfs the inner world. I didn’t know that I didn’t know and for that I am absolving me.
It was not easy, though; in spite of its magnanimity it is not easy for a soul inexperienced and gentle, curious and enthusiastic, and above all passionate and insatiable like mine, trying to find its footing on earth, to enter into such deep human feeling. Even the soul has to contend with the Love of Life.
I did not think that what I was saying would affect you deeply not from conceit but from ignorance. I also did not think I was capable of evoking such genuine emotions in another human being. I did not believe in the power of my own self, but that had nothing to do with you. Just as I didn’t know for myself, I also didn’t know how important it was to have explained that to you. Double miss, I know that now, dear, but I didn’t know it back then.
When I saw you taking in all the energy of my own ignorance and especially the straightforwardness of my wondering “am I really in love with you?” then I began to connect, to feel your calling for the first time. Not mentally, but in my body. And spontaneously I approached you, knelt down, held your hands and could do nothing but to give myself to you. This power, this indomitable, as it has been narrated and celebrated multiple times, power.
I could truly stay in that position for a really long time, because this realization requires it; to stay there, where I was actually surrendering to what you sensed first but ultimately was for both of us. And the body, which instinctively and unmistakably always knows the truth about us, showed me everything already then; I didn’t understand it then, I think you again understood it better than I did, maybe because you had more time to feel it without judging it in yourself, maybe because your relationship with you was clearer. But a mind like mine cannot handle this energy statically and wants something to do and say about it. So I said and did. And none of what I said and did was what was really happening in me. Nothing was right, although in a sense everything we do is what was meant to be. But I didn’t know it.
The next morning I came to you again, but unfortunately no clearer than the previous one, nor braver or more determined. That I wanted to be with you, that I did what it took to be there on time and see you, that I was happy and returned back your kisses, was all the answer right there in front of me. Simple and clear. But I mentally insisted that I knew better and that all of this would not work.
With a great deal of self-righteousness, the will of reason and above all fear, I pushed for this chapter to be closed at last and for us to move forward freely. Although for you I no longer know, for me it essentially opened at that moment. To lose you just because I could not say yes then is one of the greatest pains and a deep sense of injustice and despair that I experience in my life.
And when I later red a review of a French film that he falls in love at the moment when he tells her that he is not in love with her, it was as if I found the answer audio and visually articulated. Oh, and I am not the only one who has fallen into this fallacy.
I, who told you that I am not in love with you, fell in love with you slowly and agonizingly, over the years that passed, from the memory of your body and your sensation. I had already melted, merged into something larger by the time I told you that your love was so beautiful that I could not, could not resist in front of it. There was nothing false in what you did and said, there was nothing less than the authenticity, the purity of a feeling that stared at me. For the first time, someone desired my presence, my well-being, my joy without asking for anything in return, without my response increasing or decreasing the spontaneity of this life that emanated from within. For the first time I could no longer control who I was in the face of the overwhelming power of your beauty.
I could not bear to surrender. I knew I had no hope, that sooner or later it would happen, but I resisted as much as I could, with a lot of logic, a lot of pushing back and a lot of crying. Once some things are said, there is no going back to any previous state of affairs and no matter how many new words come along they can no longer bridge the gap between what we would like and what is.
I felt hatred and anger, I still recognize them within me, because you changed me. I was never the same even though I never saw you again. The fact that I lost you forever did not mean the end of this story. And while other grounded and ordinary people accept it and move on, I was stuck in deep guilt and deep despair.
I carried you inside me everywhere I went, especially on my distant journeys to the ends of the world. On difficult expeditions to some strange places with questionable organizations and societies of people who treated me well sometimes and difficultly at other times, I felt you holding my hand and walking with me so that I would not be afraid. And in the evenings I would tell you what impressed me about all these other cultures and how my perspective on the world was changing from these trips. But I didn’t tell you that it was all because since I could not have you, I wanted to find something else, because the pain was bleak and this time I would have to face it and find the answers myself and not so cowardly ask you to do it for me. I had to know for myself. My question to you lacked mental fortitude. You cannot know for me. Even though I am dealing with one of the most tempestuous energies that annihilate our personalities as characters, I ought to know for myself before I looked you intensely in the eye and make my own decision about whether or not I am in love with you.
And now, knowing that you have moved on in your life, having your own family, knowing that our lives unfold very differently and do not intersect, I know that I am in love. I am in love with you. I may no longer know who you are, I may have stayed energetically in the young version of you that told me I love you back then, but now I can also give space and time to my own young version of myself back then and tell you “I love you too”. Yes, I am in love with you as well.
You are my first love, the one who opened the door for me to start experiencing romantic love for all other people in my life. You are the one who said yes to this energy through me. And through this movement of your love, I can love you and through you and all other men. And even though no one can compare to you, for only one is the first, the one who offers himself wholeheartedly to open the way, I hold within me this gift freely. I love you too so wholeheartedly, freely, for you. And all this love may you receive it one day in your life. This movement is all for you, my beloved. I am in love with you, and through this movement, I fall in love with whatever else it brings. I love you.
And I will love you as my first love tenderly. As I cannot not love you I can only leave you little by little, more and more each time, with a sweet sense of love within me, and I too move on to my own sexuality, family, freedom, with the absolute awareness that I am forever changed, that I survived through it all and that I live through your love. And I have no thanks so big I can fit it all in, nor do you ask for it. I have only one more I love you to say to you today, as every day, from my Soul to your Soul. I love you.