Don’t we all remember the first time we fell in love?
It was all about the stolen kisses, the secret meetings… The sweet nothings we would be uttering with our lover around! … Oh those steamy, spontaneous, fierce making out sessions!
Those feelings of loving the partner and the never-quenching thirst to be loved… Yes, we remember it all.
When I fell in love the first time, I believed in ‘soulmates’, and felt he is the one. But then, the dreaded heartbreak happened. My lover changed. He left. He left me for someone whom he just met.
That blood red sweater he bought me for Christmas; that song where it says ‘Nothing’s gonna change my love for you’; the love notes he wrote me; that 98.3 radio song he dedicated to me when I was down with chicken pox; his CDs with notes on the inner-cover: all covered in him. I thought about getting rid of things, but I realized that the strongest memories were not those, but the ones in my head. There was no way I could throw those out. He left me broken, scarred, making me swear to myself that I would never fall in love again.
Most of our parents did not fall in love before marriage. They got married, and then fell in love with one another. And it is after marriage that they first had sex. That’s the reason our generation has always seen love and sex together. Our generation has always believed sex to be an extension of love – something that two people have just for each other.
But today with Tinder and WhatsApp, we’re busy swiping right and left, love has gone for a toss. Now, love is just a thing that we wish we had. Though the saying goes: “with age comes maturity”, with love, sadly, even the gold medalists and PhDs have failed.
Once I left college and started working, my life changed, I started working on matters of consequences. I stopped opening my heart to avoid feeling vulnerable again. I made do with casual sex and gave up on the notion of love. Who’s got the time to once again feel one’s lover’s warm embrace or the sweet gestures they make to convey how much they cherish us…who’s got the time for that kinda love, eh?
So I admit it, sex is easy; it’s love that hurts.
I cannot emphasize enough on how much I see love knocking on my door, I never open myself with the fear of getting hurt in love again. Because hurting is awful! Sex is easy. It doesn’t matter if my partner loves me or not because I can just have hot steamy sex and let go. But such sex has no warmth.
Again, I confess. Casual sex never ever fills the void I have.
My first no-strings-attached sex had happened just after I had a nasty break up. I held nothing back, went all into the person, wanting to get out of my misery. It worked very well for the first time. But with every successive casual date, I started searching for the warmth I felt once, for something real, but I ended up feeling absolutely nothing.
I started having more friends with benefits. But every time I had sex with no-strings-attached, I became more and more emotionless. Each time I had sex with a new ‘someone’, I felt like I’m growing lesser and lesser of a human. I feel no warmth once the act is done. I get a hollow feeling followed by casual sex. There’s nothing that holds me to that person. Think about it, have you felt something similar with your rendezvouses?
The non-stop explorations I make with other bodies, I never allow them touch the chords of my mind and heart. Instead, I make myself believe that being alone just with myself is simply what will keep me happy. Attachment seems to become a big deal, who needs that?
But often, that isn’t enough, is it?
Sexting, sending nudes, video sex chats, one night stands – I have done all of this. But they do not kindle my emotions. Nor can they even scrape the surface of my heart. All that these sexcapades can do is add fuel to the fire brewing in me.
The moment I remotely start liking someone or fall for someone, I don’t waste a moment in getting all my guards out to keep them from hurting me. Oh those horrible feelings I had to go through when that ‘someone special’ earlier broke up with me and my heart wouldn’t stop aching.
But even after all casual sex that I get to numb my heart, I again get the feeling that may be, love isn’t that bad. Because somewhere deep down I still crave for that warm cozy feeling called love. Because even though love hurts, I do not want to feel lonely in my heart. I am willing to once again become vulnerable by giving someone else a chance again.
Loving somebody means gifting our glass heart to a person along with a huge hammer. We can simply hope that they would never use the hammer.
Which is why after two failed relationships and uncountable sexual encounters, I still am waiting for that overwhelming feeling, waiting for that one person who would hold me in his arms and never let go.
So today even if I swipe right and left through the countless faces whose profiles seem interesting, deep down in my heart, in the back of my head, there’s still a warm part of me hoping that some day some person will prove me wrong.
But untill that day comes, let me just stick to sex.
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