naliligaw (na post)

It always happens quite quickly. I may be a woman of few desires (a few desired men :P) but I always seem to know within the length of the first real long time together that I want him. I can go for years and years without truly wanting anyone (except vestiges of the last one wanted), meet one and know within that first day that I want him.

I say I want him because I read somewhere a few weeks ago that that’s the more honest utterance. It’s how the Spanish say I love you, “Te quiero.” I want you. Gusto kita.

Perhaps many days and nights later, when I would have had the chance to get to know that one, I’ll look back on that first episode and smile ruefully at myself. I may not have known what I was getting into. I would have realized just how little I knew the guy when I first said I wanted him. Standing atop many complications and complexes later, I could have struck on the head the girl that was I, the one with the lovestruck eyes on that first day, “Silly woman.” Because it is never as simple as it seems on that first day.

But if I really think about it, I have yet to change my mind about those that I desired, and got into relationships with. I may have fumed and ached and cried, been in bliss and laughed till I almost died. But they all had to happen. I have never (even if I may have said otherwise many times) really regretted them. I know I wanted them. I want them no longer as of this time but the truth is, I did.

For the most part (there have been exceptions and I enjoyed those too), I have been attracted to men with a sense of their personal power – the ones who knew what they wanted, knew they were good for something. The ones too who knew they wanted to talk to me, and did so. If you stood them all in a line, they mostly wouldn’t look the same. Except that if you started to get to know them better, you would know.

Then too I have always had this overwhelming (lol) desire to be held, to hold hands, to touch base physically. I have probably wasted many long moments and conversations, not being truly in that moment together, but yearning instead for the touch of the hand, wondering endlessly if he was going to take mine. I find that I look for that reassurance that I am wanted, in that touch of the hand. Sometimes I’ll need that touch even before I can even share more of myself. Pleased and confident, I can say, this is who I am, and I am glad we want each other.

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Whenever I am asked who I loved the most, I will say I loved them all – the different me’s that existed at those different times -- with all of the passion that lies quietly and fiercely within me. And often, I cry and grieve just as much and just as hard for the loss of my illusions, my hopes and my dreams as for the real love and connection that existed. If not harder. All those wish-we-could-have-done-that’s and wish-we-could-have been-that’s, they are the real stakes thru the heart in the times of loss and leaving.

But it is when you grieve that you know what you truly want. Some of those desires and daydreams wither away, but often in moving on, you are clarified of just what lies in your heart, and how what was, in fact, wasn’t.

Today I grieve for the loss of an almost-romance. I may be grieving too early, or too late. Or just at the right time. Scott Peck would say as he does in The Road Less Travelled, that I am being honest and adjusting my map of reality. I find that I am no longer comfortable chasing after my romantic dreams of me with this wonderful person. I want to give them up.

(I also find that the universe has lately been very kind. I have had to lose my hopes for men, people who were/ are truly wonderful, with whom I can picture having warm friendships with for a lifetime. The ones with whom your spirit says – “Yes, I have known you, and I have loved you and wanted you, and I will always carry that knowledge and that caring within my very cells.”)

It can only get better from here on, but in the meantime, I grieve.