That Thing Called Love

Is there something called love on this earth or am I a born cynic? Why is it that even after 2 failed relationships, I am sometimes so depressed that I refuse to believe that there is love on this earth. But something within me, even in my most pessimistic moments, refuses to let go of that fact, that I may actually find true ever lasting love some day.

Ever since I was little, I was greatly influenced by my elder sister. We were both bookworms from an early age, to such an extent that I started reading Mills&Boons much before my immediate peer group were into it. Thus I grew up on a healthy dose of romantic novels and from Mills&Boons progressed onto Georgette Heyers, Victoria Holts, Danielle Steeles, Jude Devereaux and the ilk. With time, I progressed from the literary romantic domain to the celluloid one and spent a healthy amount of time crying or rejoicing at the distance or union of two lovers in Notting Hill, Sleapless in Seattle, You've Got Mail and my favourite, Pretty Woman. Having never actually been around men (I studied in a Christian Missionary school), all I ever did was dream of the perfect man. So when I was actually introduced to the men in my postgraduate years, it was with initial trepidition, that I hailed them as "not-so-perfect" men of my dreams.

I said "yes" to the very first guy who proposed me, thinking that he was to be my ultimate man, and believeing in the "death-do-us-part" myth. Sadly, even in the very beginning, I realised that it was a compromise on my part. I was going around with a man, who was not my epitome of a perfect guy. I guess I was playing the lines of "you should love that person who loves you". But then, was I not entitled to love someone for myself and have that same person love me back? So a few months later, I backed out, rather cruelly I guess. Today, when I look back, I wish I could have remained friends with him, coz although we were incompatible, he was a fine man. I lost a true friend. A few years later, another relationship followed, although a very very brief one. Again I lost a good friend. Within a spate of 4 years I have loved and lost 2 good friends which I will never forgive myself for. I sincerely blame myself for having confused friendship with love and therefore it is today that I realise that I have lived more than a quarter century without actually truely loving someone. Then am I incapable of love? Is it something alien to me? Or have I loved my parents and my family so much that I have no love leftover for a partner?

But there is that die-hard "something" in me which refuses to believe that I may never find tru love. We have a whole industry dedicated to love. Archie's Gallery and Hallmark cards would have gone bankrupt if Love did not exist on this earth. But till today, it has eluded me. My closed friends say that I am incapable of love, that I am selfish and I am materialistic. Maybe I am so. But then, I epitomise every 20-something individual in our planet today. But the only difference me me and the others is that I have managed to alienate myself from those people who had promised me unconditional love whereas others in my generation have stuck to the ones who have loved them rather than being selfish enough to find that one person to love selflessly.