As part of Marco Estrella’s 3 part series on Love:
Memory and Love
On Losing Someone
Saying Goodbye
Painting: Edith and Rudy by Alex Katz
March 4th, I met them by chance at a train station at 7:06. I missed two trains that night and was expected to be riding alone, but when I looked behind me I was confronted with the face of a familiar stranger. It was a chance occurrence, one of those things you can call serendipity.
We could have easily become simple acquaintances, sharing only false pleasantries and fake smiles.
Instead something very strange happened – we immediately became drawn to each other and talked about all topics from Happiness to the way that grass felt. Then even more unlikely the train was delayed two hours, and we fell in love.
We spent six months together before it ended, but when you are in love it doesn’t feel like six months but rather it feels like eternity.
Then when it all ends it feel like you are falling, not exactly because it hurts but rather because it feels like what once were your truths are actually lies.
This feeling of falling is more accurately a mixed feeling of delusion and hope preventing us from understanding that what so clearly seems like an end is only a start.
A relationship of any sort is a pillar, and if the pillar is right it can support you till it naturally crumbles with time. Not all pillars are right though; maybe it is that that they are built too early and can be rebuilt again but more likely these pillars are just shaky wooden poles not meant to support you.
Its not that simple though, for a month you may hope that each late train you take is the one were you will fall in love with them just like that first time.
The true solution to the pain of loss though is just as complex. To end the feeling of falling you must learn to create a net out of your own love.
Love; just as unlikely as a storm forming in the desert is it for humans to learn to love themselves. Instead we create large nets of support in place of respecting ourselves. We seek happiness and gratification through others when the love and support we need to learn to be happy is in ourselves, not the stars.
Loving yourself is not an undying enthrallment with your own reflection. Loving yourself is about an appreciation; an appreciation for who you are, your mistakes, your decisions, the quirks you though no one else but them could ever love.
Losing someone is an end, and end to a time of reliance. It is a painful start where you can either fill the gap left by stolen love with other people, or you can learn to appreciate yourself.
We wince at the thought of heartbreak, but really heartbreak is the key to loving yourself. When you stop waiting at the train station, then and only then is it possible to be happy.