Things are going well, we don’t label our acquaintance, don’t ask each other out and although we like the same things, that doesn’t make us soulmates. But after all, we’ve been Sidney and Nancy for months now, due to understatement lies unspoken “we’ll talk about it later”. We will never talk about it, above all you will never take this step, just admit it. And yet you think to yourself that things are going well after all, while at the same time you furrow your brows together and wonder what the f you’re actually doing here. Is this that ‘Summer’ effect you can’t quite escape from? This ‘I like how you make me feel even though I don’t really know what love even means’.
I knew it when I felt it. Suddenly anything was possible, life felt like it was worth something. Like you could turn that lightness into something creative, walk the streets and do a dance routine to “You Make My Dreams” by Daryl Hall and John Oates, because all of a sudden you felt so weightless. And then you suddenly question whether you really believed you could actually be happy before you met ‘the one’. It may be a story of boy meets girl, but this is not a love story.
Because while everyone else is telling you that you’re going to meet someone else and there are plenty of fish in the sea out there after all, you suddenly idealize that person even more. You don’t want to forget them, you want them back. You long for their touch, the way they smile at you and the way you challenge each other. And that even though you have different attitudes towards life – one only wants something casual if that at all, while the other one is completely into it with heart and soul and would leave everything behind for them. And still, you ignore these red flags because you project your dream image into the people you like and want to conquer their heart with everything you have.
You want to shout out to the world that there is this someone who makes you float on cloud nine, run with them through a furniture store, watch her as tears run down her face in the cinema because they are finally showing her true self and you ask yourself what you have done to deserve her finally letting down their protective wall. It all started with you liking the same band, the same song or movie and thinking how it could be that this one special someone feels the same way. And you think: They must feel that too, I can never imagine that; they will never behave towards other people the way they does towards me.
And then comes the reality check. All the expecations wash away. Completely dissolved, you will find that this bubble you were in will burst and this illusion will dissolve with you. We fall in love, but the person in front of us is not always the right one. You also might be not the right for them.
I was in both sides of the aisle. The lesson I got was that rejection is the worst thing in the world. Painful, scary and extremely educating. Once you get rejected you only have two choices. Fall into depression, become a cynic and give up on anything resembling an attempt to find what you were looking for, ever again. And the second choice is fall into depression, and learn from it. Do not allow yourself to fall into the trap of blaming yourself for who you are and what you are. Rejection teaches the single greatest lesson; you are what you are, do not punish yourself for that. Accept it, and the rejection turns into a blessing.
And then you may find your ‘Autumn‘ without even looking for for them.
