There were three, so far.
Three people I can honestly say I loved. Different and yet similar. I do love rather easily and deeply, but not without caution or reason. I could tell you a love story about all of the people closest to me, because I love them incredibly deeply, in a different way.
One of them.... he was the first. I didn't plan on it being him, and in fact, the idea was suggested to me. At the time he was just someone I could talk to and goof off with. It was the first time I really connected with a guy, I guess, and it kind of took me by surprise how quickly the feelings blossomed. We became a team. He stood up for me, even when it cost him. He was noble, despite his best efforts to be something else. He'd get beyond surface level and in the quiet when it was just the two of us, he'd bare his soul. He'd swoop in like the white knight for me. When we finally really crossed that barrier between friends and love he quite literally swept me off my feet to do it. I'd told him how I felt and fully expected it to break things apart. He came over late at night and changed everything. He told me he loved me at the same time he swept me up in a kiss I thought only happened in the movies. I felt like my heart would explode, I felt like crying, I felt like it wasn't real, and I felt like flying. I can still feel little flutters sometimes when I think of that particular moment. We were young and growing up with each other, and we learned. We were the kind of silly teenage love that'd drive for hours just to be together, that'd run out into fields at night and cover each other in kisses...that held hands as if it'd pain us not to...for a while.
Things changed, life changed, and he felt like he had something to prove, I guess. He's one of the few exes I have that I was hurt by the most and that I really really couldn't stand for quite a while. We're at unsteady friendship right now. I think the thing that makes it hardest to think of him or talk to him, or even about him, is that I know what he *could* be. He's so caught up in this game of machismo and player mentality...the kind of message men get that they have to be a dick to be somebody or be cool. And I know what his heart is like. I guess it bugs me that he doesn't just go with what's real most of the time. And it's hard to be around him when he DOES ditch the exterior, because it reminds me all of the reasons I fell so hard for him to begin with. It's a state of confusion, knowing the real and the fake coexist so easily, but it would never work out.
Another? I never worry about fake with him. I never worry about anything with him. This was the kind of love that's like breathing, it just happens. And instantaneously, without you asking it in. People always talk about sparks flying, but this was like a flash of lightning. It brought to light the dead husk of a relationship I was clinging to and it showed me someone so close to my soul that I was immediately scared of what would happen next. I shoved this one off, because I knew that love could hurt big time by this time. But this one? Didn't go away. And it was so deliciously different. So tender. Here was someone whose heart was his heart, in every situation. Someone I didn't need to think to trust. Things I didn't believe in I saw full evidence of. I'd go anywhere for him or with him. I'd do anything. And not in some trite way....in a way I didn't really even understand. By this time I wasn't naive enough to not see the flaws. I saw them clearly. But what I had with him was so much more important. The level of intimacy was something I don't know if I've ever gotten near again. There was no dark corner for me that he didn't know about. Not even a little bit. The biggest scariest things were safe with him, and are safe with him. No matter what changed or changes, this is a love that never will. And you know, it's a love I never doubted. I always felt that we loved each other dearly, and maybe it didn't mean the same things all the time, but I would never say I wasn't loved. I think it was the first love that was the kind I'd always been taught about, unconditional. I remember fighting and wanting to make up immediately because it didn't feel right not to be around him. I remember that that feeling was mutual, and the moment I realized it first. And this one is hard to write about, because it's a different kind of thing. It's not anything I moved on from, it's something I very much still feel. It was never a question of love burning out, and it never will be. My heart doesn't let this one go, to the point where it causes problems, because I know my heart will always bend to him, and it's power I don't have over me. I don't like that, especially when I know I need to do my own thing. It's one thing for love to die, it's one thing to leave someone because you know it's not there. It's another just to leave.
And another. Someone who I've walked with and known. Someone who was on the radar but in the peripheral sometimes. But consistent. Someone to walk in the rain with or to just be still with. Someone I've always had lots of laughs with, who I've always had things in common with. He's a defender. Of family and friends, even when they don't deserve it. If I thought my first love was a white knight, it was only because I didn't know well enough that he was. Someone I struggled with and missed if he wasn't in the peripheral. And then it changed. From peripheral to essential. Gentle and so strong. For as much as he protects someone that I want to help. Someone that can freely say he loves me before I can even think it. Someone that makes me laugh and smile and think. Challenging. And sure, ups and downs, greys are our color. But consistency is what I love here. Someone I can count on. All the times I back down and think "no, you know what? too much. It can't be how I think it is" he's the one who comes back in the door. So much exploring and living to do, I just feel like it's the best meeting of the minds I've come across, you know? Someone who shares the music, the desire to go out and really live, the books and the movies and the absolute absurdity. Hours and hours in I just wish there were more hours. This one I'm trying to shut down. I don't mean to do it but I do. So far, it hasn't shut down though. I don't know what that means, and words on paper (so to speak) seem too real. If I could turn every word into an hour with him I would, and then some.
And I don't know what brings me to share the three, but there it is. Loved, love and loving.
What any of it means, I don't know.
I guess we'll see. You learn something from all of it, that much I do know.
