first love

day 40/40, can you believe it

there is a young woman who has never fallen in love. never had a crush, never even felt a spark. she has sort of resigned herself to it, embarking on an ambitious & time-consuming career--she might as well, predicting no need to maintain a work-life balance. that being said, she doesn't not date.

and she is not very nice to date. she never lies or breaks any rules. but being somewhat lovenumb, & wanting to feel love, & also very afraid that she isn't feeling love because she is not loveable, she finds herself too fascinated with men who are too fascinated with her. she hopes that the force of their feelings will awaken her. when it doesn't she pushes or pulls a little, does what she can to intensify their feeling, still hoping the feeling will find a mirror in her. she does not understand what she's doing to them enough to feel guilty about it. she's doing it too effectively for them to want to guilt her about it. at least until things end. their explosion of recrimination comes too fast and heavy for her to learn anything from it. she is always left baffled. too baffled to come up with a reason not to try the same thing again.

love does come for her. it even comes for in the form in which she’s searching for it: in one of those too-fascinated men. he doesn’t seem that different from any of the others at first: equally surface-eligible, equally fascinated. or, rather, if he does seem different, the difference is a slight discomfort she feels around him, something weird and new that almost decides her against him.

why does his play work on her when others didn’t? part of it is a natural draw between them, but that’s not enough, she is too unpracticed to fully feel and follow such an inclination by herself. part of it is that he’s a better charmer than the others. and part of it is that, unlike the others, he doesn’t resist at all her attempts at charming him. the others were a little resistant, but he falls fully at every trick, & she, expecting & preparing for resistance, is surprised by his willing plunge & is helplessly pulled along by it.

so she gets what she has been hoping for for so long. she’s in love now. she finds it a mixed blessing. even requited love is a little miserable, especially at first, the fast-beating heart, the loss of appetite, the uncertainty. she hates and loves being in love, loves hating love & hates loving it. normally love erases exes but the exquisite pain of even this requited love awakens her guilt towards them. could she have done this to them? could she have done worse? it torments her even as he shepherds her quickly (though still in the most approved fashion) into exclusivity, and then an engagement, and then a wedding with such beautiful pictures, and then a honeymoon.

they had lived together a little while they were engaged but nothing weird happened then. now after the honeymoon, slightly weird things are happening. missing packages, a wedding invitation that never came followed by an email asking why no rsvp, things disarranged on the porch, then one day a note. his ex. of course. the story she pieces together from the note is weirdly similar to hers, his persistence, first love, even another lovelorn exgirlfriend, this one from his highschool instead of from college. ah: so he’s good at this because he practiced.

she’s definitely scared of this other woman. and she expects to be jealous. but the jealousy doesn’t come. instead, to her own surprise, her hatred of her own love starts to dissolve. she likes feeling that he is practiced at this, that he did this to her on purpose—that it’s his responsibility. and she likes that he shares her guilt. that he’s meddled with hearts too. she throws away the note without mentioning it, gets a post office box and a ring camera, and for the first time experiences love as perfectly sweet.