Have you ever been in love?
Or, more specifically, have I?
Author’s note: many of the names in this essay have been changed. When I refer to a person by name in future essays, it’s safe to assume that pseudonyms were utilized.
…
“Have you ever been in love?” My sister was the first to pose the question. It was an evening this September, she was on her stomach on my bed, toying with a throw pillow as I did my make-up.
“I was married.” She just looked at me, raised an eyebrow at my response. An insufficient answer. “But I suppose I don’t know if those are the same thing.”
“I know you loved Alexander [my ex-husband] very much. You loved him more than I’ve seen you love anything.”
“Yes, but that isn’t what in love means. I am sure that I have been, I’m sure that I was. With Alexander and with Luke [the guy I lived with on a sailboat for a few months]. I must have been but I’ve never considered it. I certainly loved them. In different ways for different reasons but I love them both, even now.”
I had been on a second date the night before, a new guy that turned into an intense, brief relationship. He had approached my friend and I at a lounge-y nightclub and I’d left with him an hour or so later. We watched old concert videos on his couch and did not have sex and I left around one the next afternoon. “As soon as I saw you, I was like ‘it’s her, get me out of here.’” He told me.