I've already done it

Fallen in love, I mean.

Just once.


Well, clearly, not really.

I've fallen in love many times. And I still do - I fall in love with the cafe boy who's reading my favorite book, with the subway man who glances up at me like he knows me, and with the friend-of-a-friend who's already in a relationship that I had a great chat with one time.

And I've loved real people on occasion. A boy once that could tell you all the stories in the world that were all about you. And with a soldier who only told the truth about everything. And with a boy who saw sadness in everything. And with a man who only saw sadness in himself.

But I've only fallen in love once.

It was the end of summer when I was 20. I had stopped loving people for a while, and he was on the brink of beginning his real life. It was the most inopportune time, which meant of course something was bound to happen.

I can't remember the first time I saw him. He was just a gangly person at the bar - a friend of a friend - and we went for cigarettes at the same time.

No, that's not true. First I met him and insulted him. After which he ignored me for the first part of the night which suited me well - from the photographic evidence, it appears that I spent the first half of the night reading the newspaper while he flirted with everything at the bar.

But at one point, we went for cigarettes at the same time. And then we couldn't stop. We couldn't stop talking, couldn't stop looking for each other at the bar, couldn't stop seeing each other out of the corner of our eyes.

The night ended predictably. In my bed. Groggy, giggling, and enamored, at 8 in the morning. In the inbetween though, something happened.

My whole life, I've been told by people in happy relationships that there is this moment when you KNOW that this person is special. That this person is IT. And I felt that. I remember looking at him, and thinking to myself "Oh, this is it. This is the person I'm going to marry".

So of course the night ended in my bed at 8 in the morning.

And of course we never spoke again - really - afterwards.

But be it because it was real, or because I was young and naive, I have fallen in love. With a man who was everything I've ever wanted. And because of him, I can never, ever do it again.