So. Now it's back to the drawing board, in the eternal quest to devise the perfect plan for mad, mad romance. And along the way, hopefully entertain y'all with my quioxtic adventures.
I am Wile E. Coyote, and love is my Roadrunner.
The strange thing is, this last time around, I tried everything I possibly could. More often than was remembered, I made grand gestures, I made tiny gestures. More often than not, I was patient, I was loving, and I was supportive through many incredibly difficult things. There were also times I was a bastard, and there were times I fought hard, and sometimes dirty, for the things I needed. But I took my love to Cirque Du Soleil. I bought her a motorcycle helmet.
(If you don't understand how buying your girlfriend her own helmet is a sign of commitment, you're not a biker. Just so you know, a biker won't let his girlfriend wear the Hooker Hat. The Hooker Hat is for the rest of you. If you don't want the Hooker Hat, have your own helmet already. That makes you potential girlfriend material, rather than a hooker. Everyone loves a professional more than an amateur.)
Sometimes I was rough, sometimes brutal. But all in all, I did some unbelievably beautiful things, and still my partner left our relationship feeling unloved. So unloved that she claimed I had never said I loved her. Somehow, after so long spent chasing, and catching, and holding, and giving, (and to be honest, a fair bit of fighting, and judging, and criticizing), at the end of the day, I'm still left on the wrong side of a closed door.
I will be surprised and not surprised if I find it in me to do anything as beautiful as some of the things I did in the course of this courtship. I don't know how to match having brought a black leather rose to a strange girl in the desert, and then spinning that into a friendship, and that friendship into a romance, and that romance into love. So I will be surprised if I find it in myself to run that road again.
But I will also not be surprised at all. Because life and love are, to me, primarily about the beauty of the moment, and the attempt to create perfect things, things that are both perfect in and of themselves, and perfect again in the context of the whole.
The first part is easy. Creating a perfect moment is something one person can do for another, alone, and without assistance of their partner. In fact, it's so easy, I don't understand why so many boys take girls out on lame dates. The second part, however, is impossible to accomplish alone. The creation of a flow of perfect moments requires teamwork, and trust, and partnership, and above all, a willingness to take risks. It requires something like matched baggage. And it helps if any wounds you may carry have already scarred, if not healed.
I am good at the first part. Very good. I have damned myself with moments of perfection that have taken the breath away from new loves as I told them stories of what I had done for the old. Unfortunately, the new seem to miss the irony and implication inherent in the stories; If so much was done for who came before you, that means that they are no longer there. Despite the sweetness of the gestures that leave you breathless, there is a warning buried inside them, and there is a responsibility that comes with the gift.
That warning is this: "I have given this gift to others, and they dropped it, or kept it and ran away. The warning is that I know this, and am watchful and aware of the risk I am taking, even if you are not."
The warning is simple: "Others have loved and lost me. If you do as they did, you will too."
With strangers, I hide how broken I am with distance, or coldness, or cleverness.
With lovers, I hide it beneath fire and spun sugar.
But it's there. In fact, it's so
obviously there I'm surprised how easy it is to hide.
If you love someone, you celebrate them. You care for them. Don't waste your time with fear, or insecurity. Just protect them, treasure them, and they will be yours for as long as you can keep it up.
Baroque Zen. I'll say it again. Life without love is a hard, and shiny, and brittle thing.
Make your choice.
