Falling In Love

Love is so fascinating, isn't it?

One person begins to know another, and in a sweet and swirling harmony their conscious, their unconscious, their hormones, their brain, their heart, their body, their soul just falls entirely for them.

The romanticist in me loves the connotation of 'falling' in love. It's so poetic. For it does feel like falling.

Every other connotation of falling is negative. Falling over and hurting yourself. I am lucky enough to have never experienced the common dreams of falling endlessly down through the air. The idea of falling makes you crawl up into your shell and hide.

But falling in love?

Why is falling used in this phrase, if it is such a negative action?

Firstly, falling is usually an accident. Falling over on a street, for example, is not something that you do intentionally. And falling in love is what you would also deem as an accident, in that you don't intend for it to happen.

I like to think that falling in love is - indeed - falling. Falling into both bliss and vulnerability simultaneously. One deemed as good, one as bad.

When you fall in love, emotions otherwise unfelt tingle up your spine, excitement, anticipation, anxiousness, sensuality. This is the heavenly bliss that swirls you around and around as if you are inside a love-filled tornado; your eyes bulging with your pupils the shape of hearts such like a cartoon character, winds billowing through your hair, and clothes whispering sweet nothings in your pricked ears.

But, in addition to this, you fall into a certain helpless vulnerability that you are unable to control.

You find yourself helpless to your lips spilling truths you have never whispered to anyone before, your heart speaking its darkest corners, opening both its warmth and chill to the other person, while you just watch in anxiety and hope they don't break anything in there.

It's a frightening reality to be that vulnerable, that open to someone else. It's unusual, uncomfortable, at least at first.

For these are your secrets! Your deepest desires! Your greatest fears!

How do you know if they are worthy of knowing them, touching them, feeling them too?

Although, when you begin to get used to the feeling of them knowing you, you start to notice other things. Like you do the same to them. Their heart opens to you, you get to see their corners, crevices (metaphorical, in this case), their deepest selves. And while you are walking along the little, flower-lined path, looking up around and everywhere at this person's information and secrets, you can't help but think 'well, how beautiful this is.'

It isn't all beautiful. Some corners are ugly and filled with spiders and creepy crawlies with sharp teeth. These parts, the skeletons in their closets, haven't been tended to for a while. Though here they are, exposed to you. You smile as you know that soon enough, the creatures with the sharp teeth will turn out not so bad after all, as you will help to shed a light on them, clean them off, understand them. Together.

Vulnerability is scary, and beautiful. All at the same time. So you do fall, you cant help it, but it is the most wonderous fall you have ever taken.

That is what love is. Accepting each other, the light and the dark, for who we really are. A wise man once whispered to me in my most beloved childhood series: 'we all have both light and dark inside us, it is the part that we choose to act on that makes us who we really are.'

Love is not just bringing out the best in each other, it's also acknowledging, no, embracing the worst, and continuing to love unconditionally beside it.

I am not suggesting that love is perfect, or it is essential for happiness. Nor am I solely talking about romantic love, for this could also apply to love for a child, a friend, a mother.

Life is unpredictable, people are unpredictable, and so is love. You may find love, and then it not work out. You may have used to love, but now circumstances mean you fell out of it. This is all okay, it's the way life goes.

When you get your hands on that true love, it is something really special. To share yourself completely with another, will always be so beautiful to me. You almost can't believe your eyes.

Originally published on my Medium:

https://ellie-jackson-writes.medium.com/