Roxanne Tellier: When Love Takes You By Surprise

I have a friend who’s been bit by the love bug. He wasn’t looking. Meeting her was unexpected, … a bolt out of the blue that could not have come as more of a surprise to him.

“It whapped me upside the head,” he told me.

And just like that, my friend, who’s closer to 60 than 16, is suddenly feeling like a giddy teenager; smiling instead of scowling, laughing instead of cynically noting human frailties, floating on air like a lovesick Pepe Le Pew.

It’s a gift, a jolt to the system, to fall head over heels with someoneafter years of emotional stasis.  Maybe you’ve been coasting along, disillusioned with the dating games,  uninterested in revving up your heart for yet another brief relationship, disappointed in your past romantic choices, and sadly but pragmatically  resigned to living single.

Then you meet him, or her. And no matter how young or old you are, you suddenly understand why McCartney couldn’t have enough of “Silly Love Songs,” and why Van Morrison wrote “Crazy Love.” Obviously, he wrote it for you and your love!

“It feels so right. There’s no awkwardness. It’s like it’s always been,” he says.  My friend’s been around; he’s led an interesting life. He has a plethora of friends and interests, and commitments that keep him busy. And yet, new love has come into his life. And he’s revelling in it.

When two people ‘click,’ something odd happens. Love takes you by surprise; you can’t help but smile,partly because you feel so good, and partly because you’re laughing at yourself. You forget to eat, it’s hard to concentrate on your work, and everything you see or hear reminds you of them. You work their name into every conversation – casually, you think – but those who know your secret, if they are romantics, can’t help but smile at how smitten you are.

Even when your heart is steeled against intrusion, and you’ve resisted the very thought of losing your independence and cool, you find yourself falling down that rabbit hole again, and it feels just like the first time. You’re awash in endorphins, you can’t know enough about how your darling thinks or feels, you want to know everything about them. Even having perspective on the situation, even fearing the loss of control, and the possibility that it might not end well, can’t deter you. You just love the way you feel being in love.

You want them to love you as hard as you do them. You want to be ‘a better person,’ tonot make the same mistakes you did before. But meanwhile, you’re short of breath when you see their phone number light up on your cell, and you’re counting the seconds until you can see them again.  Mistakes will be made, but you’ll chalk each one up to knowing how not to make that mistake again.

The tritest love songs take on deeper meaning – maybe you even try your hand at capturing the magic in poetry.  You’re leaving them little love post-it notes, and there’s a skip in your step. You finally decide on ‘your song,’ which almost seems to describe the two of you. And you are no longer criticizing other people’s public displays of affection, because you’re now the most public displayer of them all!

Falling in love again, after years of not having someone near who comforts your soul, quiets your fears, and makes everyone else in the room invisible, is just as powerful, if not more so, than the first time. Hopefully, you are not two broken people trying to fill up the gaps in each other’s lives,  Hopefully it’s about two whole people, older and wiser, coming together to make one new, solid and wonderful entity.

It takes courage to let go of certainties, to allow yourself to fall into those waiting arms without being afraid your heart will be dropped. But if you’re lucky enough to meet someone who makes you feel that giddiness, that light-headedness that finds you cycling between tears and laughter, you’ve found that sweet spot that turns even the most hardened cynic or reprobate into a dreamer of what might be. And nothing can make you let it go.

You truly have never felt like this before, yet it feels like it’s always been meant to be. You assume that your love must be obvious, that everyone can tell that you are taken, under a spell, connected by an invisible silver cord that pulls you across a crowded room, or a city, or across a continent. It doesn’t matter where they are, as long as you know they’re in your world.

Love slips in to even the most hardened heart; it whispers in your ear, and tickles your neck with it’sscented breath. It reaches into your chest and holds your beating heart in it’s clutch. Love is the prize in the Crackerjack box of life, the open door that leads to new adventures, the promise of Spring. And the greatest gift a person can receive.

Just speaking their name gives you a thrill.  If asked, you could rhyme off a litany of your beloved’s virtues, of what gives them their beauty, and you could tell them how just being near your love makes you feel sheltered and secure. Sometimes you don’t even wait to be asked … you have to tell the world how wonderful they are.

Love.At any age. It brings strong men to their knees and breaks down the emotional barriers so many of us defend. Love is all encompassing, and yet indefinable, a combination of smells and sights and sounds, of the power of touch and the joy of two people coming together.

My friend found an unexpected gift, a chance to once more fall madly in love. He and she, long past a time when they expected this to occur, held their hands and hearts out to each other, and took a leap of faith.  My wish for them is that they have all the love in the world.

=RT=

Roxanne’s column appears here every Sunday 

Contact us at dbawis@rogers.com

Roxanne Tellier has been singing since she was 10 months old … no, really. Not like she’s telling anyone else how to live their lives, because she’s not judgmental, and most 10 month olds need a little more time to figure out how to hold a microphone. She has also been a vocalist with many acts, including Tangents, Lady, Performer, Mambo Jimi, and Delta Tango. In 2013 she co-hosted Bob Segarini’s podcast, The Bobcast, and, along with Bobert, will continue to seek out and destroy the people who cancelled ‘Bunheads’.