gwensarah and johanny
love is
22:48 & 23 December 2002

We Celebrate The Day
A Two Year Wait
A Distant Dream Is Born..-Sigur Ros

I've been *in love* three and a half times. One of those times is now. He'll most likely never know nor is it a future I can see myself actually realising but I once loved him and suspect I may again. I've been told that the first time one falls in love, that it is the most intense and each time after that it's never with the same passion as the first time. I don't think I agree.

You see, the first time I fell in love it was with enthusiasm and abandon but the second time I fell it was with my soul. It was with feeling secure, knowing there were no conditions, it was with laughter and tears and everything in between. The third time took my breath away..it was exhilaration, it was the fire of a shooting star. I don't believe that sort of love can last despite it's glory. It burns too fast and given a hurt or a trust broken, even accidently, and it can turn the other way with equal intensity.

I sometimes think of those who have gotten second chances, and at times like this wish I lived in that world too. My heart is a bittersweet place these days as I read D.'s journals and lose myself in memory of everything he was to me..we all like to believe that time is limitless, that we can break away to think, to wander, to experience and that there will still be that opportunity at specialness waiting, frozen in time. I won't say that I took it for granted, that I consciously counted on D. to always be there in case I changed my mind. When he first made his feelings known I simply was not ready but when I knew, I threw my lot in with his with no hesitation. I would have loved him forever and the thought of another would never have entered my mind.

Sometimes love isn't simple, sometimes a sacrifice must be made. Sometimes one has to let go in order to keep the the other whole.

We were happy, reading over my journals I smile at that girl I was then, so very content with the world. We had the luxury of two months together before he was to return home and it was glorious..my journals abruptly end one day in June and when I would pick them up again, my life would be vastly different.

That June I learned firsthand what an ugly place this world can be and that monsters really do exist. When D. returned it was to find me not the girl he left behind but one broken. I handled things badly in retrospect by not trusting in his words that he loved me just the same, in justifing my running away as protecting his heart. Reading his words from that time eases my heart to know that I never dimmed in his eyes even if I did in my own. In so many way each of us felt we had let the other down, and it slowly poisoned us both.

I've been told that time heals all, I don't think it heals as much as makes us wise enough to work through it. For D. and I it was a turbulent two years before we could see past the fog, two years that saw us say goodbye to one cherished friend and hello to the infant that would share that friend's name. Two years of tentatively re-threading our friendship while settling into the fact that we were now different people. For so many years we had grown together and suddenly there was a detour and rejoining.

We never again talked about that summer. For some reason the one who I could tell anything to was the one I wouldn't let myself confide in outside of my initial halting recounting.

Do I wonder if things would have turned out differently had I realised this sooner? I already know that it still wouldn't have been happily ever after..too much had already happened, but the one thing that I am certain of is that he knew I loved him even to the last, that he was the friend who held my heart.

The last time I saw him was my birthday last year, Brownies on a St. Patricks Day weekend..a beloved band and a birthday kiss between friends as the music played. It was is if the years had slipped away and the two of us at the Apple Orchard, and something shifted in that moment, past and future colliding.

Sometimes I wonder if things go full circle, if sometimes our hearts lead us back to the very beginning. If maybe there really is such a thing as second chances. If every time we fall in love, that it's that "second chance" to do things right.

Sometimes all it takes is trusting the words of the one who loves you.

And as for my earlier statement of the future I can't see for me, maybe I should take a chance and believe in serendipity and the magic of two people finding each other in the darkness.

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