First, Second, Third

I'm not one to read books that other women typically thrive on. I don't do fictional romance novels, or the like. I will read a Nicholas Sparks book every now and then, but it is no way like the greatest thing since sliced bread.
In a state of desperateness the other night at work, I read one sitting around on the back shelf. While I will skip most of the stupidness, at one point, a girl makes the statement to a guy who is in love: There are three kinds of love. Love, Big Love, and Great Love.

Love, you get over in two months or so. It stings, but not too much. Big Love might take you two years to really get past if it ends. But Great Love, you don’t get over. And really, it only happens once. If Great Love is rejected, you really can only move on, and find the one you love second most.

She also says that if you have to move on from that one Great Love, then it becomes too late. Once the book is closed, it can't be reread.

Love is certainly far too grand and mysterious of a thing to wrap it all up in one simple line from a book. But I think there may actually be something to this.

We have all been in love before in some form. Most of us have probably experienced different intensities when loving someone in a romantic sense. Some, you might love like a dusting of snow, that melts easily enough once a little heat comes along as the day starts. It was real enough, but didn’t and maybe couldn't go anywhere.

Sometimes we have a love that we really did invest in, and really did have something with, maybe had a real shot with. The kind that can really rattle you when you suffer its loss. The kind that can leave you needing a year or two alone just to settle your heart and find healing.

Then there’s that one.

That one who achieved a level, a depth with you that no one else will ever achieve. That one who is elevated above any other, in our hearts. Whether you had 10 lovers, or 20, or 50, or however many times you were “in love”... whether you ended up getting married, or no matter what, that ONE who affected you in a way that no one else ever will, or ever could.

How sad it is, when we are somehow unable to retain that one? When somehow they got away, or you screwed it up, or however it went, that they are simply gone from you.

It is sad, to be with that person you love second-best, although it’s not a total disaster. That doesn’t mean you would love that person in some lame or crippled way. It could still be really great. And if it lasted, maybe that ONE that holds that highest place in your heart, would eventually fade into a place of less importance, even though they might never lose that status in your heart.

To discover someone who makes your heart soar like no other, and not just for the attraction or great sex, or how they make you feel. The purest appreciation for who they really are, and the way they appreciate you or understand you as well - both of you with the ability to express it beautifully. To find someone you admire and adore beyond anyone you ever have or ever could...

The one you would offer your very best to, or break any rule for, or make any sacrifice.

It can become even more intense just because you know this. You know this isn’t some attraction, some light dusting of snow. You know this isn’t someone you just love or care about, yet knowing that the relationship is flawed underneath and will most likely or quite possibly have to end one day.

But to finally say THIS ONE I can finally invest everything in. This one, I don’t have to hold back some part of me... can be such a relief, such a joy, that the loss can almost become something you don’t want to survive.

It’s hard, too, when you discover that you married or had children with someone who doesn’t hold that high place in your heart, either because no one ever has, or because you gave up and quit on great love, and just went to do whatever, even trying to tell yourself it was a stupid pursuit anyway, or that it doesn’t exist.

I have been in love before. I have said I love you when I knew it was just the feeling of the moment. I have said I love you to someone who I knew I didn’t love fully. I have said I love you, and meant it, down to the very core of my being, and with my deepest heart.

Have you lost that one, and now can only hope for something that gets close? Or, does the future hold one that would surpass everything else, and be that really great love, and surprise you, after you had resigned to having lost the one you once loved the most? Is it possible to re-open the book on the one you lost, if they reappear? Possible for your heart to soar as it once did?

Is your great love in your past? Are they in your midst right now? Are they in your future?