Movies have always shown how people fall in love. Boy meets girl, maybe even another boy and suddenly a love triangle emerges. Boy has to choose between the girl and the other boy… and guess what? One ends up heartbroken. While the wedding and the “I choose you” scenes are always tearjerkers, I’ve always wanted to see how the unchosen fall out of love. Being a second or even a third choice is not the best feeling. And while I cope with the idea that I’ve yet again “failed” at another possible relationship, I find myself trying to figure out how to fall out of love while keeping everything together. Without a guide or a comfort film to guide me towards accepting the facts and moving on, I have to wonder… Are we so afraid of falling out of love that we don’t even acknowledge it?
I grew up around a saying that goes: “The last thing you can lose is hope”. Realizing some things are not meant to be can actually feel like that last bit of hope. You ignore all the possible signs, but when they eventually become inevitable… you start to lose hope of it ever turning into something more. The moment you realize that, the falling-out-of love process begins. Followed, of course, by a huge wave of frustration. When all is lost… What do we do? How do I cry or move on from a very good talking stage? Am I even allowed to feel bad over a simple “fling” that only had one good date? Were the signs there? Was I (again) more into it than the other party? Do I keep talking to this person? Do I embarrass myself even more by expressing my wish to remain friends? This unknown territory is probably the worst part about falling out of love. You are, indeed, falling out… but of where?
I’m over the idea of falling in love, much more even falling out of it. We get ourselves into these messy situations and somehow struggle to get out of them. Like immature teenagers getting stuck in a swing set. They know they don’t fit in it, but somehow they manage to get in and it feels victorious… until they can’t get out of it. Panic starts, you feel as if you’ll never feel the ground or your legs again… then again, wasn’t that how you were feeling when falling into love? How do we tell ourselves that this one or the next one will be different? Do we ever truly lose that last thing called hope mentioned at the beginning?
At some point we must hold life accountable for our weird and certainly messy life experiences. After everything…do they all mean nothing? After all the heartbreak and the struggle, and how hard we work to move on from them, shouldn’t there be some credit for enduring them? And if not, how do you retain a sense of value in yourself when you have nothing concrete to show for it? Because at the end of yet another failed relationship, when all you have are wounds and self doubt, you must wonder… What’s it all worth?