Four

I have loved four men in my life. According to statistics that say that the average person falls in love six times in a lifetime, i have only two left, but then again some people fall in love once or twice, and others never fall at all, maybe this would allow me the luxury of falling in and out for the rest of my days... so anyway; four men in my life.
Over the course of the past five years all this has happened. The first one is the only one i knew from longer, this thought leaves me wondering how my life would've been different had i not moved to France... I probably would've still been in love with him.
I am big on learning from my experiences. I am big on so many things as any follower of this blog would have noticed, but one of the things i am biggest on, is learning from my experiences.

My first love is until today my fiercest love, i often wonder how much of that love was abuse, addiction, lust and youthful notions, and the beauty of life is; i will never know. My first love was according to my experience of love, my fiercest, it was the love for someone i would have actually died for, the love for someone i could not bear the thought of being without, it was a love that intoxicated my every thought and action. It was an obsession, it was uncontrollable, an avalanche of emotions that would not stop. I lost friends and family because of him, i lost myself for a long time because of who i was when i wanted him. I was always either ecstatic or devastated. I never gave anyone more, and i never hated myself more than at the end of that relationship. My first love taught me all the terrible things that love can turn into. And from learning that i learnt all the things that i would never do again. My first love taught me self worth, emotional independence, my devastation at the loss of him taught me that nothing was worth losing myself. My first love gave me the basics that many are born with, and i was absolutely unaware of. My first love broke me down so i could build myself again from scratch. My first love is why i moved to France.
My first love taught me, that even when the unimaginable happens, life goes on.

My second love was a dream. He had me at what was possibly even before a first glance, he had me at my being exposed to his aura before we met, he had me at that smile, and the memory holds power over me still. If i counted all the days that i have been with this man, in the geographical sense, they would not amount to two weeks, and they would be scattered months apart. My second love defied distance, defied logic, defied boundaries, my second love was a merging of the souls. Everything was beautiful when i was with him, geographically, spiritually, on the phone or in a dream, everything was beautiful and full of love. Together we were fire, we completed each other's sentences the second day we met, he played the piano for me and i wrote love letters to him. My second love was perfection, my second love was a dream. My second love solidified my belief in other lifetimes, where surely we were lovers all our life, in a time where the circumstances were not so impossible. My second love taught me freedom, my second love taught me that love was absolutely irrational.

My third love was the only real love i ever had. He loved me slowly, and i loved him dearly. He showed me what it was to accept a person fully; he saw wonderment in all i did, and i saw perfection in all his flaws. The only real love i ever had, my third love taught me that love was in the simple things; we cooked, we read, we got drunk, we watched TV, we sat in silence, we walked, we drove, we played, we laughed, he put flowers in my hair and was my nurse when i was sick. My third love taught me all about today, live today, have fun today, you are magnificent today. My third love taught me to be in love with him today, just today, for the better part of a year and a half. He taught me things about the world, simple things and simple ways to use my hands. My third love was a bully with a weak spot for me, he taught me how to scream at him and how to pack his stuff in a bag and gracefully dump it at his feet when he pushed me too far. My third love was a tough guy who let himself be a little boy with me. I loved him dearly, i loved him completely, and the last day i was with him was the last day i could do it and still be on my feet.
My third love taught me that even a love so complete, was not enough.

My fourth love happened to me. There is no other way to put it, he came into my life forcefully, and left unexpectedly, i had very little input to what has been my fourth love, i had consented to neither, and all that is in between is lost to me in a world between fiction and fact. Had my heart not still been burdened with sadness i would not have thought it to have been a love at all, but if i am to be true to myself i must say that i loved, the question of who or what i loved will remain forever unanswered, but i did feel love, and in my books that counts.
My fourth love came into my life for one reason only; to teach me how to be loved. For i believed through-out that he loved me utterly, and adored me endlessly and treated me accordingly, and that was very very hard for me. My fourth love taught me how to be loved, a lesson that no one had succeeded in teaching me before. Had he not been the ruthless man that he is, he would have probably failed. My fourth love taught me to open myself to someones love, and to fall in love as a result of being loved.

After i lost my first love and reaped the consequences of never being able to speak with him again, i vowed never to lose my friend with the lover, with the second forgiveness came easily, and i traveled to the ends of the earth to make sure that i would not lose my friend with the third. My vow broke with the fourth, and it is every bit as sour as i remember it from three years ago. All of these men broke my heart, if not a lot then a little, i often wonder if that is why they are the only memorable ones from a list that is three or four times as long.

Between the four of them i have learnt how strongly i can love and still go on after loss, that it's beautiful to surrender to the madness of love, that love alone in all it's fullness is not enough, and i learnt how to be loved.
I have learnt all this in some of the most beautiful places in the world, i have learnt all this and i am only 27 and now with a man who i know loves me more than all of them did combined.
I have learnt all this and come out sane, oh how i doubted that i would ever call myself sane.

I have loved four men in my life, and i am all the better for it, now please if you have lasted this far down the post, cross your fingers for me that i will not need to do it more than this one more time.