When I was 8, I snuck into a narrow room. It was built more as a pantry than a room, really. It had one window and many shelves, but the floor was only wide enough for one person. Here, the maid and I played UNO during a thunderstorm. Here, I would hide, fold myself in a corner and write in my journal. Here, at 8 years old, I practiced kissing my Prince Charming, first using the wall, then using my right arm. Soft lips, no tongue. I had no idea people used their tongues. Of course today I am still mortified at the thought of swallowing another person’s face, and still mystified at how I thought this was desirable, certainly with the right person. But that day, while I kissed my arm, I imagined his name.
What would his name be, if he existed? This Prince Charming? My saviour?
Michael.
The sweetness of the Western name rolled off my tongue and left its mark. Like honey. Like chocolate. Like ice-cream..
And how old would I have to be before I met him? How long?
Eighteen minus eight. And a quick gasp of despair and disillusion. Ten years?! Ten years before I get to experience this kiss? This love affair?
Horror upon horror. How could I wait this long? How do I keep yearning for something for over a decade? I was convinced this want and yearning would surely destroy me. The potential that it would take this long to keep on going without being happy was simply horrifying. How is it that every book I read, and every movie I watched always ended up with a marriage, or a relationship? Clearly this was the ultimate endgame. Clearly, happiness did not begin until one finds their soulmate. And so if that were truly the case, were children just supposed to be incomplete, unhappy, unfulfilled, kept waiting until the day they turn 18 and they were allowed to leave? What happened to children until then?
Of course, I was much too young to understand that love took many forms – unrequited, familial and platonic. That you didn’t have to be 18 to experience it, that some go through their whole lives without it, while some believe they have it, only to have it taken away much too soon, or that it can be taken from you, violently, maddeningly, without your consent – a transgression you carry until adulthood, a stain so vivid that you will compare the rest of your lovers to this experience – is this what it feels like if you have a say in what happens? If you have some power, some control?
And how could I understand what I did not know, what others don’t tell – a lesson so deep and unwanted that most adults don’t conceive of it unless it is inescapable, unless it has become lived experience – that the love you feel changes as you grow older–that no matter how honourable, moral, passionate, idealistic and pure, the love you felt when you were 17, or 21, or 24–will fade. Like all things that burn brightly, a light so blinding it consumes everything else, the impact of the explosion so intense, so volatile, so wrenching that when all is over and darkness and silence resume, an outline of its image persists behind your closed eye, like a shadow that trails behind you no matter what path you take–the feeling follows you for the rest of your life but it is just that– a reminder, an echo, a memory that no matter how hard you try to relive it, everything else in comparison always fails.
I’m not sure when it began.
Perhaps it first gave hints that it existed when I turned 31. I’m not sure. All I know is that it’s here – a new kind of love. One that’s a bit more logical, more mature, more pragmatic. One that I have to actively choose everyday. Not because it doesn’t come naturally, but because it comes with a certain knowledge that it is fallible– that it is temporary. It’s not as fierce as it was when it was young, nor as bright. But it is steady, and predictable. You can depend on it. It will do its best not to fail and that you can rely on with good faith.
It is not passionate but it is loyal.
It is not perfect but it is kind.
It is not powerful but it is safe.
It may not be the love I dreamed of when I was a child, but sooner or later, we have no choice but to set aside what we once thought could be, for what it has become.
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