Falling in Love Again

Your first love is a feeling that you never forget, it is hard to explain. You pour your heart, your soul, into the relationship, into the other person. You jump into the relationship with recklessness, not afraid of what you might hit on the fall, what you might hit in the end. You leap, tumble, and throw every bit of yourself into this first love because you have every bit of yourself to do just that. You do it all with out looking.

But this isn’t about first loves; it’s about the second, the third, the fourth, and the tenth. It’s about all the times you try to fall in love after that. Because falling in love the first time was different, it was effortless, one moment you were looking at the person and you realized that you loved them, and that was it, you didn’t think about how bad it hurt the last time you were in love and it ended, the first time didn’t have a last time. The first time you fell in love you hadn’t had to change the radio station to avoid listening to a song that may make you cry because of it’s emotional connection to your last love, you hadn’t had to get rid of everything that reminds you of them. By the time you start to try to fall in love again you are missing pieces; you aren’t who you were the first time. You’ve been hurt, you’ve been in love and it ended. You jumped without looking and the collusion at the bottom hurt a lot, and how many people I ask would jump without looking again after that?

That’s why falling in love again is different than the first time. You are more careful. You give yourself more slowly emotionally, and perhaps faster physically. Because now you know the beautiful, nauseating, whirlwind of love. You know that something’s can get in between love, that it isn’t invincible like we like to think.

When you fall in love again, it is different, it is hard to explain. Unlike the first time you truly fell in love, you are now doing it all over again knowing that it could hurt, you could shatter. The first time you gave yourself away in love unused, you were fully you. The second time, the third time, the fourth time, you give yourself away you’ve been through a lot, not just in love but also in life. You have baggage, the other person has baggage, and you have to learn to love despite that. You can’t love as fiercely, for fear of breaking, you love more gently.

The next time you fall in love it will be a feeling that you never forget. It is so hard to explain, you will still jump, tumble or fall but it will all be so different. 

-- Inspired by Thought Catalog--