the better story

In films and in books and in romance in general, love at first sight is a big thing. Two people see each other in a crowd, their eyes meet, and they both immediately know that they are meant to be. And I've heard about stories like that in real life. My dad always says he knew the minute he saw my mother outside his high-school that she would be his wife someday. And the other night, my aunt's friend was telling the story of how she met her husband: they were in Paris, she was taking a seminar and he was teaching it. She dropped her pen on the floor and he picked it up for her, and their eyes met. She immediately told her friend "I have the strangest feeling this man is the man of my life." And they've been married twenty-years or so now. 

These stories are great. They make us all dream and smile, and hope for the kind of love that you see in "The Notebook" which makes every girl cry her eyes out. 

What's funny though is that many a times, these words have been said and things did not work out --so they're quickly forgotten. If things had worked out, the story would be told on every rooftop. My friend Rebelious got engaged 6 months after meeting her boyfriend, because "they just knew." They were married another 6 months later and at their wedding, he told the story of how the night they met, he told his friend that this is the girl he was going to marry. And he did marry her. But then they got divorced two years later. So much for a romantic story.

I'm not trying to poke holes into wonderful romance. I love these stories. I just think they trap us in these little boxes and make us feel like that's what we should look for, someone we're just going to look at and know within minutes that he's the one. I don't believe that anymore.

I think I was in love once or twice before. And each of these times, I had decided that I was "in love" almost instantly. In love with someone I didn't even know. Now I am convinced this comes from watching too much Cinderella and the Little Mermaid as a child, because how someone can love a person they know nothing about now seems completely absurd to me. You're in love with someone first and then you get to know them? And you find out what they're like and you have to accept them with all their faults because you already decided you love them. You love what, exactly? 

Love at first sight now seems  like a recipe for disaster. You meet someone, fall in love, have a picture of them in your mind and what happens next, in most cases, is that they keep disappointing you --they don't live up to that image. They are not want you wanted them to be, and once the infatuation wears off and you realize it, it only goes downhill from there.

And then you meet someone one day, and you don't expect anything. He makes you laugh maybe, something peeks your interest, but wedding bells aren't ringing in your ears, and you haven't pictured what your three children are going to look like within an hour of meeting him. You just meet him. And spending time with him is what makes you want to spend more time with him. And suddenly you find yourself surprised by the way he is. Good surprised. You didn't build-up an image, he builds it for your, little by little. You discover each other and the more you learn the more you like. And I think that's a better story.

there are no love stories like in the movies

I have a friend who still believes in love like in the movies. She dreams of passion that would last through decades, that would survive routine and babies and boredom and age, that would awaken sparkles in her eyes even ten, twenty, fifty years down the line. She believes in the happily ever after and she doesn't want to settle for less. Afterall, she's seen it happen. In "The Notebook."

Now last week, I acted in a short film. And it was a love story --like in the movies. I met the actor who I had to fall in love with at 7am Sunday morning and by Sunday afternoon he was proposing on a beach with the sunset in the background. And the truth is when we were acting it out we kept laughing at how weird the whole situation was and how we felt like in a Mexican TV Series, but on screen it just looks like we're happy in love. I saw the footage and it looked so amazing that even I believed it for a second. And the entire film is condensed quick-shots of the evolution of a love that is born, grows, flickers and dies. It travels through time, skips through the boring parts, only shows the audience what they want to see. Think about all the moments of love you've had in you life. If you just edit them and add some amazing soundtrack and tie everything together, you've got your own film.

But there are no love stories like in the movies. In real life, love stories are only felt in glimpses, in moments captured in a sort of capsule that only last in our memories. Love is not perfect. It is not gentle, it is not kind, it is not forgiving. Love is a mess of passionate turns that leave you hanging on the edge of a cliff. It's a roller-coaster that goes up and down and sideways turns your life around and scares the shit out of you all the while giving you the greatest rush of your life.  

This year that I spent out of love was the best way for me to finally understand it. I recognize it now better than ever, and I've learned to appreciate it as what it is: discontinued and rough around the edges. Many a times, it doesn't come inside a wrapped-up package with a pretty bow. And I had a glimpse of it, I think. There's someone was in my life for years and every time I saw him my heart skipped a beat, but it was never good timing for us. And the truth is, I know deep down that if we had gone for it and tried being together, I wouldn't have been happy. But when I was with him for a glimpse of time, I know we had something special. If we had turned this glimpse into a relationship, then I'm afraid it would've spoiled it. So I chose to keep it special: Even now, I can close my eyes and always smile when I think of him, and I just appreciate it for what it is: a love story that could've been.