On Love

Last week, some of my friend broke my heart in individual confidences of loneliness and hopelessness. They opened their ribs and showed me their atrophied or mutilated hearts, and I wasn't sure how to treat such a severe wound to the human being. When the ache of the hurting heart hammers between the ears, one becomes temporarily deaf to the muffled words of caring friends.

I was glad to know they'd come to me, though. I have not known such pain in years, but my friends ask me. I think my best friends ask me because they knew I was "that girl" in elementary, middle, and most of high school -- the one that people said "Ew, only Barbara would ever date you" or leave love notes in my locker with some poor soul's number on it knowing I'd desperately call it, hoping, maybe, that my own shriveled heart could know peace. My, though, how the ugly duckling blossoms!

I spent a lot of my youth with older folks. I didn't care for the bullies that swarmed the schools and playgrounds. I liked to talk to the special education teachers during recess in elementary school, and I played chess with the college kids and teachers in middle school. I went to every English Festival with Mrs. Kovach and drove her nuts with every spare second she had. When we moved to New York, I did more of the same, because I knew I was still the underdog. I volunteered at the hospital and made some friends. Mostly, I just wanted to enjoy sidewalks and flowers.

A sagely woman at the hospital told me the most important thing I've ever heard about love. Our acquaintance at the emergency room reception desk was recently, disastrously divorced. He was tired of the usual coaxes and was failing every blind date his friends had set him on. The sagely woman told him:

"Love is like a car accident, Dave. You can never see it coming."

I could feel the words sinking, but our friend and I were incredulous. This woman had been married for thirty years to a man that was sitting at home, building a library and fixing up the house for his wife and him to enjoy. Then again, anecdotal evidence is the weakest of all cases. I shrugged and helped more folks find room numbers and friends.


See, though, love is like a car accident. If you're trying to do everything you can to keep yourself out of an accident, you're going to be okay. You check both ways three times at the stop sign. You wait just a second at the green light to make sure that cheetah coming at you stops at the red. You keep distractions at an absolute minimum and you check your tires. Nothing is going to catch you by surprise today, old sport. You're going to get to your destination without a trouble.

It's when you have a plan, a thought, an obsession that preoccupies you, a single idea that won't let your mind keep your guard up, that you don't take that extra second at the light. That's the moment that some mad idiot comes slamming into your life and paralyzes it, and you can't seem to stand up right. Your life is changed forever. You didn't see it coming. You certainly didn't ask for this mess. But it's here, and it's not going away.

I have yet to find a more appropriate metaphor for love. Car accidents are scary. I've been in enough of them to know I never want that to happen again. I've yet to find a better metaphor, though, for the suddenness, the vulnerability of those involved, the casualness of the events leading up to such an event. It's these big and little things that make this singular idea so immortal in our entertainment and desires. Love is so 10,000 years ago and yet strange beyond belief even as we explore distant planets and decode the human genome.

I believe in love at first sight. I'm a fantasy writer -- of course you know I believe in it. But I didn't believe in it until I was caught suddenly and powerfully by surprise one October day after a horrid breakup. I thought I'd prepared myself against all surprises, and I was wrong, and here I am. Everything has changed, but that's okay. Change is okay.

One day I'm going to write about the day Alex and I fell in love at second sight. That will be after some short stories finally get posted up here.