LOVE

LOVE IS MANY A DESPERATE THING. Especially to a teenage girl in the ’80s. I had an urgent desire, an unwavering expectation that I would find everlasting love. The kind of lightning-in-abottle romance that would last a lifetime, a notion that no doubt came from the movies or maybe it was The Love Boat. This youthful optimism lingered into my 20s, where the rom-coms of the ’90s promised that all a girl had to do was state her wish to the man of choice and voila! This approach was summed up by Julia Robert in Notting Hill: “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.” Cue Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

In reality, my romantic relationships came closer to the decade’s fashion trends – grunge and minimalism, that is, messy and monochromatic. A starter marriage begun on a sunrise beach at 29, ended by divorce in a strip mall at 31, further beat down my idealistic view of love. Three disastrous relationships later and, by my mid-40s, I’d given up the pursuit altogether. It would be the solitary life for me. And I was fine with that. As Hollywood tortured genius Orson Welles once put it, “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” Given his own three failed marriages, he was an expert on the subject. But he had a point. Throughout my life, men have come and gone, there’s been undeniable rejection and heartbreak, but my friends and family have been as steady and true and happily ever after as any rom-com ending. And as I’ve entered my 50s, the love I have for these people and the love they have for me is a many splendoured thing. For as the novelist George Sand wrote, “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”

“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved”