I've been in love with two women in thirty years. . . I've said it to more women than that; that's one of the things about being in love, I guess; did you really love her? didn't you? Love and. . . almost love. It's like trying to tell identical twins apart sometimes. I guess generally you get caught up in a moment and you say it because that's what you're feeling and then once you've said it, then it's out there and it coasts along on its own for a while. Sometimes it's not until afterward, sometimes a long time afterward, that you know whether it was real or not. I've observed this year that the only way we have to measure how much we love a person is by how much grief we feel when they're gone.

Six years after breaking off contact with her completely, I still think about the first girl I fell in love with. We always think that the hardest thing is loving someone when they don't feel the same way in return. It's awful, isn't it? That feeling your chest or the pit of your stomach when you think about that person; feeling like your world is going to fall apart because you know they'll never feel the same way that you feel about them. But it isn't the worst. The worst thing is feeling that way about someone, and knowing that they feel the same way - and you know it because of the way things are when you're with them - but having to sit by day after day while they refuse to acknowledge it. That's how it was my first time around. It got better when I left home to join the army, but I was still so invested in this girl. . . she had such a hold over me. Like being jerked around on a string and it's a wonder to think that I didn't give it up sooner for a lost cause. I suppose Hollywood gave me unrealistic expectations about love.

So finally I turned the other way. I don't know when exactly it was, but sometime around this event in my life, that I stopped trying for a meaningful relationship and started to focus on sex. . . which, I'll admit, was really great for a time. I might not ever use the word fulfilling to describe those years but they were certainly entertaining. I, being already practiced in keeping my emotions tamped down, was learning how to hide the better part of myself from the majority of the people in my life, to include my family and most of my friends. I used to to think there was nothing really wrong with that. I keep to feelings to myself, no one really gets hurt. . . because being invested in another person means that you can get hurt; someone reminded me of that recently. So I didn't have relationships with women. Pleasure was my number one priority. If I happened to find someone that felt the same way then that was good, it was easy and clean. If they didn't then that was too bad but it was my feelings that I was worried about, not theirs.

Five after that first episode with love, I fell in love again. It was never supposed to happen that way but things sneak up on you I guess. You start spending extra time with someone because the sex is good but it's casual and that's agreeable to both sides. Then a. . . bond develops over time because you start spending time together not having sex. You start thinking about that person if you have something exciting happen or you have something terrible happen and then for no reason at all. And now you realize that this person, who you weren't supposed to get very attached to is your best friend. There's a fine line from that realization to deciding that you're in love with someone. I had missed all the warning signs and was now, once again in love with someone who felt exactly the same way, but couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it. The day I left that town, I had resigned myself to the idea that we just weren't meant to get a shot.

If you're going to ask for the ball then you have to catch it when it's thrown to you. I did not do a good job of that. I realize now, about a year too late, that I never really learned how to put the two together; sex and love that is. Really I never bothered to reflect, or ask, or do anything, to see if I was still capable of loving someone that way before I jumped in. It's a little scary when someone loves you and wants you that much. I remember multiple sermons during my time in Campus Crusade for Christ, while I was still wildly idealistic about the way the world works, about relationships and how one person shouldn't be the center of another person's life. Like a lot of things that I remember from back then, that now seems like it might not be 100% accurate. That's what being in love is, right? Every world, actual and figurative, has to have a center. Something that it orbits around, something that holds it in place. Otherwise that world would just float around in space, colliding with other worlds.

I lost someone. Entirely my fault, which for me makes it about a hundred times worse. Hindsight is like a punch to the gut sometimes, being able to see that there were so many opportunities to change an outcome if you'd just been willing to try. I lost someone. It's almost like I had two separate people, one who makes plans for the future with the woman they love and one who still wants there to be other possibilities, warring in my head. I'm not sure when in my life I started to let my integrity slide. I know it happens slowly, over time, you start to make exceptions for yourself. It's a big sacrifice to make, though, and since I can't even identify what I might have gotten in return for said sacrifice, and since I'm now sitting here lamenting, I sincerely doubt that it was worth the trade off. I lost someone and to that individual I want to say that I'm more profoundly sorry than you could know. It's my loss.

People might read this and people might not (it'll definitely be one of the two of those). I hope now to learn and to do better in the future; to be better. Hope is important and I believe that it springs being able to better ourselves; to change ourselves into people of greater character. I guess, if it ends up that we eventually have to give up on a dream, that our best hope is that we become better in the process of chasing it.