Love & Loss

With this thing called love, we sometimes question our choices and decisions. When things do not turn out how we want or expect them, we sometimes regret that the situation happened at all. A famous saying comes to mind. “It is better to have love then lost than to have never loved at all?” So what’s the answer? Do we fall in love knowing that our heart may be broken into a million little pieces at the end or do we avoid love all together?

During the St. Lucia Jazz festival last week, international performers were not the only ones flying into the country to make our week a more exciting one. Old flames and love interests were here as well, making me question my decisions and love life. This one guy in particular who things didn’t end too well with would be on island. We hadn’t really spoken for a while and I question whether I even wanted to (speak to him). I became extremely nervous and anxious about the whole situation and questioned whether I should have started dating him in the first place. Yes, I did learn a lot about myself, about love and life but wouldn’t everyone be happier and wouldn’t things be easier if I had never dated him?

Anyway, this is of course a small island, so we bumped into each other during all of the jazz festivities in Rodney Bay. I was across the bar and felt my girlfriend elbowing me (very hard) in the ribs. “What?” I asked her. “There he is, over there, blue shirt. Do you see him?” she asked. I looked across and there he was laughing and talking with some friends. “Are you going to say hello,” my friend asked. “Well should I? I don’t know,” I answered. Last time we had seen each other, we had both been angry, so I didn’t know how he or I would react. I finally mustered up all the courage I could and walked over to him. “Hi there,” I said rather casually, pretending I had not rehearsed the conversation in my head. “Hi, how are you?” he said smiling. We spoke for a few minutes and I realized that all of the angry feelings that I had felt had somehow vanished. We had grown up, learnt a lot and moved on. Well that wasn’t so bad after all. While talking to him, I realized how much I had changed since we dated. I had learnt a lot from the situation and realized that I would have been a different person without it. The love and loss was well worth it.

Sometimes, a relationship must come to an end, not because the people want it but because it has too if someone has to move away for work, school or another important factor. Earlier this week, one of my friends was telling me about her own dilemma. Her boyfriend of three years was leaving the island in two months to go back to school. She had hoped that they would have a future together but now she was not sure at all. Could she last three years without him? Ok there might be the occasional Christmas vacation but that would be it. She began to question whether she should have ever fallen in love in the first place and started to point out all of her boyfriend’s flaws. After we spoke for a bit, she realized that she should be thankful for the time that they spent together even if it might come to a premature end.

I recently read an article, which said that we must fall in love with about ten persons before we find the one. Ten! Ouch! So we better be prepared to love and lose and love and lose again and again and again. Until next week…