I've been thinking about love lately.
I don't know what got me started thinking about that. Perhaps the fact that every visible surface is plastered with hearts, xo's, sweet sentiments and all the rest of the symbols of love as Valentines day draws near. But aside from that a wonderfully entertaining new reader of my blog, lilly, has been writing of love this month. It was her post on February 2, "What Is Love", that probably kicked off my love musings, then the next day or two after I read that I was walking up the mountain behind the house and the song "Addicted To Love" by Robert Palmer came on my i-pod. I laughed aloud at the lyrics. Oh yes. That's what it feels like alright.
Your lights are on, but you're not home
Your mind is not your own
Your heart sweats, your body shakes
You can't sleep, you can't eat
Your throat is tight, you can't breathe
Trudging up the hill I remembered.......
I fell in love once. I fell in love with FH (former husband for any new readers). I was 19, he was 24. The first time I saw him was at my very first job interview ever. He was on his knees flipping through a filing cabinet as I was shown in to my interviewer. My skirt was as mini as they came....it was 1967.
When he turned to look up at me, his heavy lidded eyes glided from my ankles slowly up that long expanse of leg and finally our eyes met...no locked. I was burning with the certainty that he could see right up my skirt. Well if it wasn't love at first sight, it was definitely lust at first site! What a job interview that was. He fiddled around with those damned files the entire time and I was so flushed and nervous I haven't the slightest idea what I said to my interviewer. The only thing I was aware of was that I had to know more about this man. I remember thinking, If I am not hired I will die. But I was hired and that set off the events that formed the next 40 years of my life.
He walked like a man who had been places and seen things, and actually he had. He had returned from Viet Nam recently. A lock of thick black hair flopped onto his forehead at the slightest movement; he was tanned and muscled, slim and hard as a rock. He was devastatingly handsome and he was as edgy as a razor blade. I liked that. He seemed dangerous. A bad boy, for sure. He had been a green beret on an A-team in the army and he knew everything about survival and getting along and getting what you want. And he wanted me. He was also at the bad end of a six month marriage. I eventually met him for stolen hours deep in the woods and brief, steamy encounters in the coffee room.
He was still married for three months after I met him, and though I knew I shouldn't that didn't stop me. Now do you see a case here of the karma train exacting its due? Yes, I've thought about that one.
Those were the most exhilarating months of my life. I was eaten up with being in love. It was so mentally and physically taxing I don't know how I survived. I was engulfed.
Mmm said recently in a comment that being in love is so exhausting. How true. A lovely exhaustion to be sure, though.
I don't really expect to ever feel that again. Surely there was a youth quotient to the heat that can never be replicated at my riper age, even when I meet the man who can set a fire in me. When I do meet him, will it be a bonfire he sets? A wildfire? Or will it be a low simmering bed of coals that will warm me in a more extended, sustaining manner deep into my soft old age.
Hmmmm. Sweet thoughts, but at the moment I'm just as happy living in the moment. I am wide opened to love, which is a good thing because love can only enter through an opened door.
Yes, I do believe I will fall in love again one day. I didn't believe that at all for months after the divorce. But I know now I have way too much love percolating inside me not to spread it around a little. Certainly no hurry though.
Love can take its time.
