Some Kind of Love
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
It took another blogger’s writing to help me tap into something I’ve been carrying around inside me; unable to acknowledge nor articulate for some time. From her words on hope and crushes, I found myself commenting about my own crush, then thinking more about what I realized therein…
My crush is on the memory of who my boyfriend was when we first met nearly a year ago. The things he wrote to me; how he wrote them. The way he looked at me then, the way he kissed me urgently. The joy of him reaching for my hand.
Those early moments were filled with the hope of what could be between us. I wrote about it once in an effort to remember and keep it for what it could mean so that one day I might look back on it fondly. And just as I did, it came undone. Life intervened- as it often does- and affected everything, just everything.
Now I see us spending our days trying to get back to where we used to be. But I realized today that I’m afraid we never will recapture what we could have had. I’m afraid that the opportunity for such things has passed and now that kind of romance will never be. And I feel badly for admitting that and worry about how it might affect him.
But the truth is I miss his writing- it was special and it moved me. I miss his readiness to smile at an expression on my face, at an offhanded joke between us, at the novelty of the newness of us. I miss how we used to be to one another. I miss his happiness.
But in its place, we now have love. We have understanding and friendship and companionship. And we support and confide in one another. I have never shared a more honest and reliable, respectful and mature relationship. I was finally ready for it and could appreciate it. I count myself lucky and feel grateful for reaching that point in my life and to have found someone like him.
In these ways we have more today than the mere hope of such things in those giddy early moments of an unformed relationship…we have the realization of them. And yet, even knowing and valuing that realization, I still feel a pang for what was taken from us too soon. For who he was to me then; for who I was to him.
i think that this must be a normal progression in a long term relationship. because ive been there. found myself missing the newness to it all, but at the very same time feeling so COMFY with the place we’re at now.
What a great post. I think relationships are constantly evolving. As life moves around us, we adjust and change. We can’t change that life changes. But, what we can do is find new and wonderful things about our relationship that we might not have experienced before.
Beautifully captured again. I think every girl experiences this, I know I do. At the start, all I wanted was confirmation that this was real and it was going somewhere and that he liked me.
Now that we’re there, all I want is the butterflies and some uncertainty (the good kind). Why is it you want what you can’t have?
As your relationship continues to grow and face new challenges and develop you will face other new experiences that will bring about other “new” feelings that, while not the same as the “new love” feelings will have their own specialness and anticipation for the unknown.
We can never go back, and we too often lose sight of the beauty of the present while looking there and wishing for what was, or looking toward the future and wondering/ worrying what will be.
I’m glad you’ve realized to appreciate the love that has developed. It sounds like you happy and love each other. Enjoy that!
I’m the kind of person that always wants to fast forward through the newness until it is the stage that you are now at.
Beautifully written.