Picture it: parks and libraries, bookstores and skyscrapers, cocktails shimmering in starlight. If I’m honest with you, if I’m honest with myself, that’s how I thought I met the love of my life. It was every Nora Ephron romantic comedy turned up to full volume. Harry Connick, Jr., sang me through the streets of the city and whirled me around while flowers bloomed in my heart and hearts danced in my eyes.
So, when the pandemic hit and the world shut down, when I found myself separated from what I assumed was the love of my life, and when the love I was so sure of wasn’t so sure of me, I could feel those flowers wilt and the light go out of my eyes. This wasn’t how we were supposed to end, was it? Could my shining, beautiful love story just come to a complete, screeching halt? If I had met the love of my life, did that mean that this part of my life was now over? Would I feel that way about anyone ever again?
I had questions but no answers. I kept expecting him to come back. It was the fantasy I played on repeat. He’d realize it was a mistake. He’d change his mind. My love story could resume, the soundtrack of my romance would come back online, and the absolute certainty I felt would be confirmed.
That’s the love story, the epic romance, that Hollywood sells us.
It’s even in the romance novels that I write. People aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. There’s a reason the second chance love story sells.
But time kept moving inexorably forward. It didn’t slow down and wait for me to grieve or speed up to help me get to the other side of it. It kept going, and I came to the painful realization that the love of my life could not possibly be so one-sided. So, if that person wasn’t my soulmate, who was? Did I still believe in the existence of a perfect-for-me match, or had I retired that as more myth and fantasy?
It took a long time, but my grip on the past eased until one day I was no longer holding it at all. I wasn’t even sure of the exact moment I released it. I only knew that I could breathe again.
That is when I met the actual love of my life.
I could breathe, and I was free. My life stopped feeling like it was absent of someone who should be featured in it. I began to bring main character energy into my own life. If this was a love story, if it was that glowing Nora Ephron romcom I love so much, then I would romanticize as much of it as I could. I would stop waiting for Prince Charming or Sam Baldwin or Harry Burns or Joe Fox to walk into my life. I would stop building skyscrapers of love stories to people who could not love me back.
I would finally meet the love of my life in me.
Isn’t that the real plot behind every truly momentous love story?
It’s not that we find each other but that we meet ourselves more deeply through the process of loving. I loved and I lost, but that doesn’t cancel out the love or erase the memories. And the truth of that love story is that I kept on loving — loving him, loving my friends and family, and loving the life I had created even if it wasn’t the one I had once anticipated.
My whole life was a love story, but it wasn’t the one I’d been told to expect. I’d found neglectful relationships and unreciprocated love, but no one told me that the love I was looking for was in me. It went beyond romantic relationships. I’m going to be the person I spend the rest of my life with regardless of who accompanies me on that journey. Shouldn’t I love myself at least as well as I have loved others?
That’s how I met the love of my life. I met her in my grief and solitude, in my pain and the grit it took to pull me up out of it, and I met her in the quiet, in nature, and in the certainty that I am loved and love well. I stopped pouring every bit of myself into the idea of this almost-love-of-my-life, and I decided that I was going to be that person. The love of my own life. The one I would learn to love and honor in a way I never had before.
This love story is not any less romantic.
If anything, it’s more. We give so much to others. We give them our time, energy, effort, and love. Why do we give so little to ourselves?
I realized that I would need to give as much to myself as I had always devoted to others. It changed my life. The grief didn’t just exit the moment I had that realization. The love I felt didn’t just transform into self-love only. But what it did was help my life. I stepped into my personal agency and fell in love with myself and my life wholeheartedly.
It didn’t remove the challenges. I didn’t magically overcome all my obstacles. Some days still feel uphill and exhausting. But for every challenge that feels depleting, I know that I have the strength to keep loving myself. Through the tough days. Through my flaws, mistakes, and imperfections. Through all that is both in and out of my control.
My life isn’t on hold. My love isn’t limited by anyone or anything else. I am here, present, and if a Harry Connick, Jr., soundtrack plays in my head while I romanticize my life, that’s no one’s business but my own.
