The Transitional Blog: It is better to have loved and lost...

Lovers in Venice ... than to have never loved at all. Someone said this to me 4 years ago and I promptly smacked him upside the head, then proceeded to explain relentlessly why I disagreed with him. How could anyone ever wish to experience the excruciating pain of having to let go of the love of your life? The indescribable pain that goes right through you, that makes your heart clench tightly and makes you feel like your chest is about to collapse on itself. The pain that makes you want to curl up into a tight ball and never face the world again? The pain that makes you truly understand the poetry of the terms "heartbreak" and "drowning in despair"?

4 years on, I find myself agreeing that it *is* indeed better to have love and lost than to never have experienced the miracle of true love. The feeling of being "on top of the world", the slight terror of doubt that your heart could possibly keep from bursting with amour. The absurdity of the fact that you could find one little freckle so fascinating, and the certainty that you would do anything to make her smile.

For me, it truly was the summer of love. We'd just rung in the new millennium, I'd just moved overseas and out of home, and I was in the best shape of my life. Our paths had crossed for a brief moment a few months prior, and neither one had even thought twice of it. However, fate threw us together again, in another millennium and on another continent, and we both knew straight away that we had met the love of our lives.

At face value we were as different as night and day - me dark-skinned, dark-haired, serious and logical, she fair, blonde, happy-go-lucky and superstitious. But the more layers you peeled back you'd see that we were more and more the same person. What more could you want in a person you'd spend the rest of your life with? Her gioia di vivere and talent for la vita bella opened up a whole new world to me, while my more sensible approach kept her grounded and productive. The year we enjoyed together changed our lives forever; she had the best season of her career, finding herself among the best in the world, and I had my eyes forever opened to the beauty around me, in every sense of the word.

We had to eventually give in to the fact that life simply had different paths to take us, that being physically apart for 6 months at a time was just too much to bear. Although we'd officially called it quits, neither could come to terms with the idea that our grande storia d'amore had ended until about a year after. Only more than 2 years later could we begin to fully enjoy each other's friendship without heart-wrenching thoughts of "if only" and "what if".

So now at the veteran age of 25 I ask, having loved and lost, will there ever be a greater love in my life? Or in this case, will I have a new greatest love in my new life...