First Love: The Fall

Perspective is an interesting thing. As you get further and further away from an object, other items get obscured or revealed. The object itself often seems less and less significant in comparison to others that suddenly are revealed in the foreground. Sometimes the object disappears from view altogether, at other times it lingers there in the background; no longer the focus of attention, but still a part of what makes the view uniquely itself.

In some ways it is hard for me, with 30 years of added distance and changed perspective, to remember clearly what First Love was like. In others - well, it perhaps does not seem like yesterday, but at least last week...

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I didn't go through the crushes and vicissitudes of the usual High School Life Romantic. Like my mother before me, I had One Great Love during my entire high school career, and for my first year of college. I had every intention (as did my great love) of getting married when our college years were done, of moving somewhere new and exciting, of forging a life together. I believed in this future with a near religious fervor. Romeo and Juliette had nothing on us - we were the Real Thing.

Of COURSE we were. We were young, we were attractive, we had interests in common. We were clever, talented, idealistic and passionate. He was ambitious and sharp. I was creative and tender. We shared a reasonable number of values, and weren't overly offended where there wasn't overlap. We shared and understood certain traumas in each other's lives. We had compatible senses of humor and esthetics, and a shared vision of the future. We had an amusing yet romantic tale of our first encounter with which to regale our future grandchildren: we met as participants in our local Renaissance Fair - I bedecked in velvet gown and crowned with flowers, he tiddly on mead and wearing tights. He declared his intention of marrying me on that first day. It was meant to be. What cloud could there possibly be on the horizon of our life together?

I don't know which of us was more surprised and appalled when I found myself telling him that I loved him but now realized that I could never *live* with him and be happy.

It was a slow-developing realization for me, that love did not necessarily equate with happiness. It had never occurred to me in those years of First Love that there were things that I could not share with this lovely young man, and that trying to keep those parts of my life separate would eventually create a rift between us that could not be bridged adequately. It had never occurred to me that very small differences in visions for the future could end up looming large in the Big Picture when one started to look at just how long the expanse of one's adult lifetime could be.

Love isn't necessarily *enough*.

I think that has been the hardest lesson I've ever had to learn. It's certainly one that I keep having to relearn, to my sorrow, over and over again. Our culture is, in spite of what politically minded folks would have us believe, all about the redemptive power of Love. We believe, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that Love Conquers All. Romantic Love, Maternal Love, the Love of Family, Platonic Love, Love of Mankind... "Love is all you need," right?

Right?

The realization that love *isn't* all we need dawned on my First Love and I at nearly the same moment, although I had crept up to it slowly, with trepidation, while he had it thrust upon him suddenly and unawares. I handed him the Apple and watched him as he bit, saw the agony as it rose in his eyes.

Being Eve *sucks*.

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I don't, at this moment, even armed with whatever wisdom the perspective of thirty years of extra living affords me, presume to judge which sort of pain is worse.

To be the person who voluntarily ends a passage of True Love is like being caught in the Press... you feel each stone as it is piled atop you, you feel each moment of damage as it is happening, you see the agonizing end long before it's upon you and yet feel helpless to prevent it. It's a dark and messy thing, made worse by the sneaking suspicion that the person who is piling the stones might be your own self.

To be the person on whom the end of True Love is inflicted is a cleaner thing, a stabbing blow to the heart rather than a slow crushing. To many the death seems unexpected, a betrayer's attack that may have been presaged in any number of ways but whose signals we have somehow missed or ignored. There may be a certain protective quality to the shock we experience at first. But the pain is searing and the disillusionment overwhelming.

Either way, if you live through the experience there are lasting scars.

I know now that the scars are part of life, that they are necessary lessons learned, that in the end they make us deeper, more understanding, wiser people. I know now that strength comes from the testing of our weaknesses, that pain does end and joy begin again. I know that love, like a pair of shoes, can be brighter and more tempting when new and untried, but is much more comfortable and durable when worn and scuffed and tested. I know my grandmother was right when she repeated her panacea, "This, too, shall pass."

I didn't know it then, when I was Eve. My son doesn't know it now, as he faces his own Eve. It's a gift that comes with perspective, which is something that is hard-won, but which comes to everyone with time. After we survive the Fall.

I hope we survive the Fall.

This, too, shall pass...