I once had a partner tell me I made everything feel like a romance movie. The highs and lows. I could make her laugh and cry in a single moment. But, there is always the but, she said there was something artificial in the way I held myself. As if I was performing instead of being there with her, in the moment. Ultimately, it was that lack of presence that pushed her away.
We were young. Dumb. Still trying on versions of ourselves. I was a whimsical dreamer. She was more certain of our world.
That memory lives in corner of my mind, anchored to a summer seventeen years ago. I was eighteen and smitten with a girl I met shortly after I graduated from high school. In those summer months, from June to August, I convinced myself I loved her. She convinced herself that she loved me. Then reality came and that movie-like summer had ended. I headed to college, and she went back to life in our hometown.
That summer occasionally comes back from time to time. Usually in May, when I see her pop up on my Facebook feed because her birthday has come around. She has kicked ass and taken names in the time since. She’s incredible and I admire her dearly. I doubt she ever thinks about me. Which is fine. We had our time together, and life moves on. We would never work out, not with my head in the clouds and her feet firmly on the ground.
It’s a strange thing to remember your past loves. Every past love felt monumental. Real.
Now, with time and distance, I can see it for what it really was: a deep longing to connect, to belong, to be swept up in the idea of love. To believe that, for a moment, there is a person who knows me fully. I mistook love for lust in those days and several summers after.
Today, I’m still dreamer and I love the idea of love. I always will.
I write this as a reminder to myself; I will, one day, find someone who embodies the connection I’ve always longed for. It’s easy to feel discouraged as the years roll on. But at thirty-five years-young, I still believe. There’s plenty of time to find the spark, to find the one that ignites something true and lasting.
You keep searching too, friend. It will come.
Jesús M. Rivera 