I remember when I was in grade school, I would dream of prom night as some kind of a panacea. I imagined myself to be dramatically transformed into a swan from being the ugly duckling that is my normal self. I’d dream of being asked out to be someone’s date, of slow dancing and of an innocent good night kiss that will become the topic of a month long conversation with my girl friends, making a blow by blow analysis of what transpired that night and of how I was swept off my feet by my date. Then it didn’t happen. I, as a consolation prize, won the In Full Bloom award, affirming my inkling that nobody expected me to be extraordinarily pretty.
So I started dreaming of college – of how I’ll meet a ruggedly handsome artist who will blow me away with his eccentric ideas. I vowed to be fashionably unique, oozing with self confidence that no one would dare question how much of a girlfriend material I was. In my mind, and maybe, in my heart, I knew that if I finally find him, he would have no choice but to acknowledge that I was the one. Then it sort of happened. I found a lot of guys who resembled ‘him’ – the one. Only, they all turned out to be nothing more but segments of my serial dating. Yes, a lot of them were artists, but no, they did not blow me away, except that there might have been a handful who inadvertently tricked me into taking the leap. I fell for the sinfully cliché prototypes – the jock, the artist and the best friend. These fleeting amorous adventures unfolded into open ended romantic comedies that left me with no other choice but to dream again.
Naturally, I dreamt of law school. Because, really, who would not fall in love with someone who can just sit with you the whole day, inside the library, inside the coffee shop, or inside ‘God knows what place’, reading in silence without feeling like it’s been too long since you last talked? I told myself, if I cannot make someone fall in love with me this way, I cannot make someone fall in love with me. And you guessed it right, no one fell (By no one I mean someone whom I cannot seem to find in my heart to fall for and well, that simple and basic definition of no one that is NONE since I was busy falling in love with someone who was busy falling in love with someone else.)
I became a lawyer and to put it bluntly, for a time, I could not seem to find it in my heart to dream again.
At one point, one would expect me to be broken; licking my badly wounded heart to at least make it beat decently, and perhaps, that could have been the logical expectation. Only, I realized that I need not be logical about love. I still want to dream of magic and madness and everything that comes between logical and stable love and head over heels, ‘ Hell, I will die for you’ love. I guess the only way for the dream to continue is for one to live the dream.
I am living it. I owe it to my puppy-eyed self in grade school, to my ‘I want to be swept off my feet’ self in high school, to my ‘ready when you are’ self in college, to my ‘I want to be still with someone’ self in law school – and most importantly, to my ‘I have been waiting for you all my life’ self when I finally find him. A series of heartbreaks is a minor detail. The major detail is this: LOVE IS WORTH IT.
No matter how long it takes. No matter how hard it gets. I am ready.
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