Real love… how does it feel?
“Is this love — is this love — is this love — is this love that I’m feeling.” — Bob Marley (🎶 Is this love)
Let me whisper fairy-tales of you and I in paradise into existence — I will breathe them into your helpless heart — whilst I feel your breathlessness against my skin.
Rainbows and butterflies
In the beginning, there might be a fluttering feeling inside that you may liken to butterflies. A passionate desire to gaze at your beloved for hours, and the reckless urge to fall into their embrace over and over again — doing dumb shit you never thought you would. You might find that you notice all the colours of a rainbow, as if for the very first time — even though you have always had 20/20 vision. You may ask yourself…
Is this love?
How will you answer that? You may feel a little crazy inside, others around you may wonder if you have actually lost your mind #truestory.
“Seriously, are you OK?” — Others
Perhaps if you are a hopeless romantic like me, you may find yourself drifting away a hundred times a day into endless daydreams … sweet fantasies of you and your crush, abandoning all sensibilities with your middle fingers in the air — running towards a storm in the desert laughing your arses off — eventually falling to the ground taking turns to read poetry/prose or some new/old psychology stuff — then f**k each other to sleep under the moonlight *swoons*. Something like that anyway *fake coughs*
What does your love daydream look like — how does the soundtrack go?
Mine is an almighty mash up of Marvin Gayes ‘Let’s Get It On’, Minnie Rippertons ‘Loving You’, Ameries ‘Crush’, Mariah Careys ‘Fantasy’, The Emotions ‘Best of My Love’… I could go on, but I won’t…you’re welcome.
Anyway, how do you know when it becomes more than just a crush?
What lies beyond the fantasies — the butterflies and rainbows?
*waits*…
“Love , love , love , love, ‘long as we got — love, love, love, oh, ‘long as we got.” — Sza (🎶 Love Galore)
True romance
I feel like, love is one nonsensical plot twist after another.
It feels like almost nothing you do makes sense, but yet — somehow, unexplainably — it does (Wait, i’m really side eyeing that word, unexplainably… did I just make that up? Meanwhile, Google is free … #anothertruestory).
*takes a moment to Google suspect word*
Breaking news: unexplainably does not exist, the word I was looking for is inexplicably. Clearly, it’s too late for me, but you folks can save yourselves from this grammatical gaff. I know you might be thinking ‘why didn’t you just correct the word instead of adding this entire paragraph?’… good point — well said. But I figured I’d keep it real, part of the process — true writers life stuff. You can thank me later.
Have you seen the film True Romance? Well, it’s a love story filled with the crazy, passionate and reckless type of misadventure I hinted at earlier. Two people, meet go on a date to the cinema, laugh, talk and confess — declare undying love for each other — then get married. That’s day one.
The next few days they spend getting entangled in a violent drug negotiation, in efforts to cut ties with a past life and set themselves up for a new one together. Whew, it’s a bit of a bloodbath (it was written by Quentin Tarantino, so if you’re familiar with his work — then, enough said) but amongst the hectic — these two show unwavering commitment, sacrifice and a willingness to release the grip on the reigns — and depend on each other.
I’m not delusional, I know that’s a movie and this thing we call love ain’t Hollywood — but if you strip away the cameras, the action, the lights — and hone in on the commitment, sacrifice, physical attraction and interdependence — I think you’ll be left with most of the makings of real love.
People tend to say, you’ll just know it when it’s real love. I wonder if that’s really true, seems a little more blurred lines between a crush, attachment and real love in my experience.
I also wonder, if it’s unrequited — can you truly say that you have ever been in love? There’s no denying, the bio chemical reactions when you feel those loving feelings inside, the scientists liken it to drug addiction.
But, without reciprocation, can you really call it real love?