That sick feeling, the butterfly stomach, the rubbery legs, the diminished mental capacity. What’s my middle name? Uh…? And yes, a feeling of being paralyzed, like some kind of speared fish, floating helplessly after a powerful sedative (wait, could this be what Cupid’s arrow is like?).
Does this woman look like she’s in control of her life?
They say that falling in love is wonderful…
A girlfriend recently told me over breakfast that she just told the man she loved that she couldn’t do it anymore and needed to break it off with him. “Oka-ay,” he crinkled his brow, “you love me, but you’re afraid of getting hurt, so you’re breaking up with me now before it happens??”
All those paralyzing sensations – it’s called FEAR. Cause when you fall in love – you realize how just how far you’ll fall if things go terrible wrong. And it’s a terrifyingly long way. Suddenly, you’re Wile E. Coyote in the old Road Runner cartoons, the one who runs off the edge of a cliff into thin air, and everything is fine – that is, until he looks down, at which point, he plummets to the earth, and hits in an annihilating plump of dust.
Yes, your mind tells you that you can’t stay up there forever in this complete and total bliss. It has to change. The laws of gravity demand it, right?
The first time my now-fiancé, Albert, and I parted (as we lived on two separate coasts) after a wonderful, but intense (for me) time, I spent the next two mornings sobbing inconsolably for hours in private. My behavior was so crazy. But it had only been a few years since my husband had died, it was later that I realized that the separation had triggered all my fears, my emotions, the pain of, once again, having someone taken away from me.
So, why would I embark on falling in love again after having been brought to my knees, pummeled into gritty bits and left for dead already by love? Where in holy hell do I find that courage? To even date, let only fall in love?
I mean, people think I’m brave because I work with horses, fly an airplane, and other things. Phooey! Bravery is daring to fall in love. It’s far more dangerous.
And yet, here I find myself again, loving, caring. It’s scary to walk on air. It takes . . . trust.
But…why can’t I just stay up there, out in the ether forever? Build little bridges; hang emergency ropes to hold on to when I find myself fearful and looking down? Alas, there’s no safety once you’ve surrendered to love. Love is disarming. And even it there was a rope to save you, you could not reach out and grab it.
It’s not like we can control love.
I’m not even in control of my own life. I truly saw that with my husband’s illness – his, and my life on this planet, was/is something that happens outside our rule. Love, too, is outside my rule (Although I can try to shove it away with force, and close the door).
A widow friend said to me as I sobbed that day, “Just know, if you could survive losing Patrick, you can survive anything.”
Hmm… An unusual a pep talk. I think she was trying to bolter me up by the thought that I couldn’t go through worse. But could I survive even 80% of what I went through now? 50%? Hmm..
But I have to say, as devastating as the loss of my husband has been, would I go back and start all over again with him, even knowing the tragedy that lay ahead?
Yes. I would. A thousand times over.
So, instead of walking away, or trying to find a way to be safe in a situation that threatens to annihilate me if, and when, I fall, why don’t I just continue to be brave, really brave, stay out there in this rarified air, and embrace happiness, even for the fleeting time that I have it. Embrace ALL of it, without holding back, without looking for a quick-exit rope.
I will survive. Somehow. I think. I’m pretty sure.
And if I’m lucky, later on, I will get to rejoice in how powerful love is, and it will lift me up, once again.
No (silly me), not later. Now. Now, while I have my love in my arms.
Meg Ryan rides her bike ride in “City of Angels”
