All We Want Is Movie-love

In Mind, Body & Spirit, Pushing Forward by Marelise Prinsloo Jacob

Movie Love

I wish I could say we met one rainy night beneath an old streetlight that it was love at first sight and I knew I would be his forever. I wish I could say I fell madly in love with him and at that moment his world became mine. But I think few people can actually say any these things, love seldom arrives in a big, flaming red bus with sirens blazing.

Sometimes you tell someone “I love you” because you think you should, because that’s what they do in the movies and you want a romance worthy of a movie. Sometimes you’re not sure if you even really did love someone, how do you know?

I’ve had people in my life I was sure that I loved, but when I look back I was just young and didn’t know the difference between being in love and loving someone. It’s easy to confuse the two.

Butterflies in the stomach, drifting away on the clouds, it makes it difficult to see things as they truly are. Sometimes you’re so in love you don’t realize the other person doesn’t feel the same.

That’s the trouble with youth, we make so many mistakes, but if we don’t, how will we ever learn? How will we ever know real love from mere infatuation, how will we know to appreciate love if we don’t lose it along the way?

I must confess I never believed I would find a love as beautiful as the man who is by my side. Many believed we wouldn’t last long, many warned me against getting involved in the first place. I didn’t know we would become lovers when we met, all I knew was I liked his hair, and I made him smile.

Sometimes he makes me cry and sometimes I make him angry, but we’ve decided we’ll have to live with that, since we can’t live without each other. With him, because of him, I become someone I never dreamed I could be. He makes me feel normal. Our love has been through so much, and been tested more times than it ever deserved; sometimes I do feel like giving up but I know I never will.

That is why I say I wish we met on a rainy night, like Bogey and Baccall in an old classic black and white. But it doesn’t really matter that ours was such an ordinary beginning, all that matters is that I can say: We met.