JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Scheherazade linked to Autumn’s post on the differences between love and being in love For a while, in my own life, I’ve been realizing how my feelings about my marriage and romance have changed through time. Also the comments in this post on love I wrote began a discussion of the benefits of arranged marriage versus do-it-yourself-(with Excel) style romance.

I think you can love someone without being in love with them. And I also think you can be in love with someone and not love them. You can have one without the other. I know this from my own experience. And I believe you can go from having either one to having both: although both involve the emotions (In Love more than Love, I believe), both can also be chosen in some sense.

Being in love is helium-balloon-high. Blowing bubbles. It’s eternal summer. It’s lush and sweet, ripe and immediate. It’s a handful of raspberries gathered in the morning. It’s a flower you want to pick and take with you. It’s moonlight at night. It’s electric. It’s ice cream. It’s a song you can’t stop singing. It’s watercolor. It’s impressionist. It’s a dream you had one night and you never did wake up.

Love is feet on the ground, toes in the sand. It’s gritty and gutsy. It’s a shovel to use in the trenches. It’s a garden you dug and planted with your own hands. It’s evergreen in winter. Love is candlelight. It’s meat and potatoes. It’s peanut butter and jelly. It’s perfume. It’s cake. It’s a photograph. It’s black and white and gray. It’s living life awake in textures and shapes.

Being in love is feeling “I’m so in love I could die!” while love dies for someone, suffering even in small ways.

For a long time I was afraid of the bubble balloon of being in love.

What Cynthia Rockwell wrote (via makeoutcity) reminded me of my fear:

The drawbacks being that if you’re delusionally happy about how great you are and how great is the world around you, you’re happier most of the time but then have that much farther to fall when something inevitably goes wrong and reality bursts your bubble. It hurts that much more.

As a child, I’d seen bubbles burst. Relationships broken into bits as if made of glass. As if romances were Humpty Dumptys waiting to happen.

I was happy to love someone. Love seemed solid. I could understand sacrifice. The give and take. Doing the work of digging in the dirt. Feet on the ground. Rational. Substantial and firm. Love lasts.

It was the balloon of being in love that frightened me. For if I became “delusionally happy”, I’d have “that much farther to fall”. Why get hurt? Why ride a frivolous emotional bubble doomed to burst?

So I’d flirt with infatuation. I’d entertain a crush or two. What’s easier than imaginary romance? But I’d never fall in love for then I’d fall too hard and too far and something would be sure to break. Like my heart.

When I married Ted, I loved him more than I was in love with him. Sure, I wrote him poems. I thought he was the cutest guy alive (still do!). I was in love with him as much as I could be. But I still couldn’t go head over heels down the aisle. I walked down that white carpet to the altar, my feet firmly on the floor.

It’s taken time. Years passing by. Sharing life as husband and wife. Some fears went away slowly. And others had to be surgically removed from my soul. It is only recently that I’ve entered into this new sweet season, this summer of IN love with my husband.

I believe in Love. But now I also believe in being in love. I’m having lots of fun with my helium balloon. I’m enjoying the flowers and perfume. I like eating my cake and ice cream. I only wish I had been able to have ice cream earlier. I wish I’d been willing and able to take the risk, that I could go back in time, take my (own) hand and tell that Julie to make that leap of faith into the feeling. To trust God and not my guts and let myself fall in love.

I’ll be delusionally happy for a while. If and when I fall, I’ll see what happens then. No matter what, it will have been worthwhile. If only to have shared the sweetness and the joy. The freedom and the fun. The laughter. If only to know at one time we were two people in love.

updated with grammatical changes!