2007-04-24 8:32 p.m.
I Want a Great Love
"Love this Way
I want to run
Into someone's arms
Lie on a bed of rosesI, I want to feel
Just like Juliet
I wanna fall in love
I've gotta feelingEverybody wants someone to love
Somebody they can trust
Somebody they can touch
Everybody wants to give their heart away
Everybody needs a little tenderness
To feel understood
To feel passionate
Everybody wants to be in love this wayI know I do (I do)
What about you
OoohI want to be somebody's baby
I want to cry and still feel beautiful
Maybe I really just wanna be myself
Am I the only one
I've got a feelingEverybody wants someone to love
Somebody they can trust
Somebody they can touch
Everybody wants to give their heart away
Everybody needs a little tenderness
To feel understood
To feel passionate
Everybody wants to be in love this wayI know I do (I do)
What about you
Oooh
See I do
Doesn't everybody wanna give their heart away
I do, doesn't everybody wanna love this way 'cause I doEverybody wants someone to love
Somebody they can trust
Somebody they can touch
Everybody wants to give their heart away (give their heart away)
Everybody needs a little tenderness (a little tenderness)
To feel understood
To feel passionate
Everybody wants to (doesnt everybody want to be in love this way)
Be in love this wayI wanna feel like an angel
I want to fly on a beam of moonlight
And I, I wanna see heaven from the inside
I wanna be in love this wayEverybody wants someone to love
Somebody they can trust
Somebody they can touch
Everybody wants to give their heart away
Everybody needs a little tenderness
To feel understood
To feel passionate
Everybody wants to be in love this way
I've been spending a lot of time trolling YouTube lately. Mainly because various friends of mine keep sending me videos. One sent me this one the other day:
Ah, Tuck Everlasting. That movie makes me cry every time. Sappy, I know, but I'm kind of a hopeless romantic. And lately I've been feeling really lonely. So watching these videos not only compounds it, but makes it rather more poignant...
It also reminds me of a promise I made to myself.
I WILL have a "Great Love."
I will have a Great Love or I won't bother.
When I promised myself that, the friend (who I've long since fallen out of touch with) who witnessed it and promised to hold me to it asked what I meant.
What I meant was, in no particular order, this:
I will be driven to distraction by the depth of feeling I have for him, and he for me. I will rise at dawn, despite not being a morning person, in order to maximize my time with him. We'll stay up late into the night, sharing our deepest secrets and feelings in whispers. Our love will be magical. We will dance together around a bonfire beneath the stars. We'll run through the forest on the pure energy that being in love will give us. We'll inspire each other to be everything we possibly can be, to achieve everything we've ever dreamt of. It won't matter to us what we do, so long as we're together. We'll go on adventures together, see wonderful sights, and discover ourselves in the process. Every moment we're together will be a celebration of being alive. Of being in love. Of being together forever. No matter our ages, being together will make us feel young and like the world is ours for the asking. We'll have passion enough to set the sea on fire. Our love for each other will be fierce and passionate, to drive us to distraction and inspiration, but gentle and soft, when one or the other needs comfort and understanding. We'll have romantic interludes the likes of which you only hear about in novels, but not trashy ones like in romance novels. Pure ones, based out of love and affection and depth of feeling, not the smut that's only based out of mutual lust. Even daylight will seem different, more gentle, more golden, but at the same time softer, paler, crystalizing moments into memories to last forever. And we'll laugh. We'll never stop laughing, teasing, joking. And when one isn't laughing, is grieving or crying or merely slightly bummed, the other will uplift them with their presence and the comfort of a warm embrace and soft kiss.
...yeah, yeah, I know. It's probably not possible in this day and age. But if I can't have romance and frolicking and a soul-level connection and adventure and laughter and joy, then what's the point? I'm closer to my friends than I could be to just about any man...unless he was my Great Love.
And I know that Great Loves never last. There's a law of balance in the universe or something that prevents it. Two people can only be that happy, that in love, that beautiful to each other if it's ripped apart horribly and tragically. That's what makes it a Great Love, instead of merely great. You'll always look back on it, and even though you'll cry every single time, you'll know that you could never, even if it were possible, trade those memories away for something less painful because it was too important to you. Because the love was real, and the time was magical, even though, if not especially because, it was doomed from the start.
At least I'm enough of a realist to know that a Great Love like I want isn't possible to keep forever, save in one's heart as a memory. Great Loves take the fate of Jesse Tuck and Winnie Foster. Tristan and Isolde. Aragorn and Arwen. Guinevere and Lancelot. More mundane loves may be wonderful, like just about any happily-ever-after of the fairy tales and Disney movies, but they aren't inspiring. They don't force you to wake up and take notice that you're in the presence of something amazing. That something extremely out of the ordinary is manifesting before you, and you'll never see the likes of it again, let alone experience it.
That's why so many Great Loves end with the deaths of both. Because how could you live through something so incredible, only to go back to daily life after it shatters? But what makes them meaningful is the lessons they impart. Sure the memories of firelit dances, whispered moments, wind rushing through your hair as your love pulls you by the hand through a secluded glade, and heart-stopping first meetings and reunions are valuable, but what really makes Great Loves great is that they never truly end. They never stop affecting you. They will always be a part of you, always gently chiding you into being the best you possibly can be.
I know it's not impossible. My grandmother had a Great Love. She and my grandfather held hands and loved each other deeply until the day he died of a heart attack, not three months before retiring, not even three days after having a pacemaker put in.
...She still gets all fuzzy around the edges when she talks about him. She still cries on the anniversary of his death. But she had many amazing years with him. And I know she wouldn't trade them for the universe.
And so I, too, am willing to suffer the inevitable pain of separation, the heart-wrenching grief Great Love ends. I've seen the pain it leaves in its wake, but I've seen the joy and the beauty and the inspiration it grants. And aren't beautiful things made more beautiful by the fact that they always end?
When I started to define a "Great Love" way back when - I was only 10 at the time - my mental image of it didn't match up with any words in the English language. Even now, my description is only a vague proxy at best, as the real thing is a feeling, not something that can be described in a litany of statements.
Also at the time, my friend pointed out that a normal wedding ceremony wouldn't be appropriate to the marriage of a couple in the midst of a Great Love. So I invented my own.
I want a fairy tale wedding. I want to be married on Halloween night, so that my wedding reception can be a masquerade ball at dusk. We'll have a pagan-esque ceremony - and I have enough witchcraft books to cobble something suitable up - and my bridesmaids and I will be a fairy queen and her maids. My groom and his entourage will be a king of old and his knights - and even the most modern of women has to agree that men with swords are sexy. All of the guests will come with masquerade masks to match their clothes and turn them into costumes. My first dance with my husband will be a tango to the tune of "Tango to Evora" by Loreena McKennitt because of it's semi-haunting melody. The entire reception will be lit with candles, and it will be just like a holiday celebration of old. We'll bring all sorts of plants indoors to help create the illusion that we're in a fairy glade. Or, weather permitting, we'll have the reception outside in a lush garden, where the fall leaves can add their colorful splendor to the picture, and we'll scatter flower petals and glitter in a fountain.
Of course, that all assumes I find him, whoever he may be. My Jesse Tuck, Tristan, Aragorn, Lancelot. I don't add Romeo because he and Juliet were a farce by Shakespeare - he was making fun of them in how he made them approach love, no matter how beautiful the poetry may be. But as Lady Viola says in Shakespeare in Love, "I will have poetry in my life!" So maybe I'm looking for my Shakespeare too. But Shakespeare as portrayed in that movie, rather than Shakespeare as he actually was.
And if I can't find him, I'm perfectly happy being alone. I'm finally learning to accept and love myself, and I don't need anyone's validation. I don't need anyone else's love to make me whole. So, I promise this to myself again, with this journal and the whole wide Internet as witness: I will have a Great Love, or I won't bother with love at all.
