Falling Slowly

I love you.

I feel so lucky to have loved before. You know, in most of my blogs I write about what I suffered because of love. I make it sound as though love is this awful, painful thing and that I’ve been better off without it, but that’s not true. Love is beautiful. It’s scary and weird and it changes everything but love is beautiful. Pure unadulterated love is worth every single tear or fight. The feeling of loving someone with all of your being is a feeling unmatched. It’s the greatest feeling one can have in their lives, I believe.

It’s more than just love towards a friend, or the love of a person’s personality. Love, romantic love, is the love of a person’s soul. It is the love of their flaws and the ability to overcome your fears. Love is seeing a person for who they are, not who they want you to see. It’s about fighting and difficult times, but at the end of the day knowing that this person is the keeper of your heart, they sing the song of your heart back to you when you have forgotten the words.

Now, I don’t want people to think that this sudden change of tone is a change of heart. I still feel that love is delicate and should be handled with absolute care, but it shouldn’t be avoided. I was talking to my friend about life and death the other night and one thing he said really struck me: that life is short. Sometimes it ends without warning and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Life is a one time around the track. It isn’t a race or a competition; it’s just life. We all end up the same place eventually. We get one shot to do it right. We have one brief glimpse of life and the universe and how the world turns and then it’s over. Nada. Poof. It ends.

I have this list of things I want to do before I die. I have the usual skydiving, travel the world, change someone’s life for the better etc., but I realized that I don’t have falling in love. Maybe I didn’t put it down because at the time I was too scared of falling in love or that it hurt too much to think about being in love, but as my friend said “life is short”. Life is too short to hide from the wonderful world that love opens up. Life is too short to spend any of it regretting what you said or what you did. It’s too short to stay angry or negative or to let things get you down because tomorrow isn’t a promise. I could not wake up tomorrow. It’s a possibility. It’s scary to think about, but it’s true. And I would die not having truly fallen in love. I have lived a wonderful life, but there is so much more for me to see in this world. There are more sunsets to bee seen, more music to be heard, and more food to be tasted, and people to meet. There are more places to go and things to learn and do. The world is so huge and yet life is so short. It seems cruel almost. Yet, I believe living a fulfilling life is possible. I believe it is possible to travel the world and fulfill a bucket list. I believe it is possible for anyone to fall in love, including myself. I believe everyone should have their heartbroken and have the opportunity to fall in love all over again. But most of all, I believe we should let the love in. We should stop running and letting our fears control us and just live; just fall in love and let go. There are no promises in life, only the gift that is today. Live it. Embrace the beauty that is right in front of you and love. Love fully, recklessly, and with the knowledge that the pain is worth it. I have come to realize that the joy is worth the pain. The joy is absolutely worth the pain.