There is apparently a reason why it is called “falling” in love. It unsettles and topples the balance of your life. The ground shifts under your feet and you lose your footing, falling is not meant to be a pleasant sensation. I am experiencing all this and more.

Of course there is always the inconvenient and persistent longing for Aquarius II, which hits at odd times during the day. For example the minute he leaves me with an offhand comment about an imagined intimacy, or when I wake up in the early hours of the morning to the cooling morning breeze, and an inexplicable feeling of missing him, and wanting to wrap myself around him to get some warmth for my limbs, my heart and my soul. My usual methods of dealing with this sudden onset of physical desire do not work. The body might become tired, or sated but the soul remains hungry and unfulfilled.

Another side effect that I have noticed is my flaring temper and my propensity to pick up fights and argument. Where I am usually passive and reluctant to stand up for myself or others, I am now quick to argue and with more passion than is usual for me.  My middle eastern heritage is to blame for some of my reactions, I do tend to angry outbursts sometimes, but I think the added testosterone in my system is also a partial culprit for my extreme reactions.

Hormonal changes are nature’s way of ensuring best conditions for pro-creation. Females become more aggressive, and sexually aggressive in particular , while males experience lower levels of testosterone making them less aggressive and more in touch with their feminine sides, and thus closer to their mates. It looks like we human animals are short-wired for these responses, regardless of age.

A lot has also been written about the pleasant side of falling. The rush, and the thrill of it. It is very similar to the effect of drugs, without the fatal side effects. These are also the side effects of the hormone cocktail love exposes us to. My reaction to those was so violent, I suspected that I was going crazy, I still suspect that sometimes. There are also the bursts of creativity, energy and emotion. So in all it is not a bad ride, the inconvenient side effects seem like a small price to pay.

The madness of my upside down relationship with Aquarius II continues. The waves of euphoria and sadness crash upon my head with rhythmic regularity and the dullness of my existence seems to be punctuated by sunshine spells of our coffee meetings.

Sometimes the coffee break stretches into a two-hour lunch break and I lose sense of time. I laugh often as I get lost in the depth of his eyes. Most of the time there is joy, and a strong erotic undercurrent to our conversation that brings flutter to my stomach and renders my knees weak. He speaks of sand between his toes, of touching a cashmere sweater or a box of mosaic and I melt at the sensual descriptions. There is some banter about sex as well, in broad daylight on office cafeteria premises, and somehow it is sweet and exciting and never dirty.

When he is traveling alone we text often. We exchange endearments like old lovers or share sweet nothings, virtual kisses and hugs, like a pair of teenagers. Why did I fall so hard for this man? I am often asked by the rational part of my brain, the part of me that likes order and logic, and organizes everything in a sets of yes/no switches or 0 and 1 binary codes. This whole thing does not compute, I tell myself.  And to be honest, this time there was no choice at all in the fall. It just happened, because of chemistry, timing and fate, a deep connection that I feel, as if I am part of this man, and he part of me. Even though we might never even kiss. I did not want to fall for him, and perhaps that was the reason for my tears at the outset and the initial heartbroken reaction. The reason why I felt so bereft (one of his favourite words) at the thought of giving away my heart to him.

Last week I told him in text “I decided that you might as well keep it”,  “Keep what?” he asked. I replied: “The heart you have stolen, I think it might be safer with you than with anyone else”. And so it is, I do trust him with my heart, and I know that between us there are no lies or jealousy -at least from my part. When, or if, he stops caring for me I am sure I will know because for some reason I think I can read him clearly. I know things about him that he never told me directly just by watching him, listening to him and tuning in to him. Coffee with him has turned into my drug of choice, as it brings me to unprecedented high. If by chance our fingers touch, the warmth reaches to my very core, I somehow know that if I ever kiss him I will shatter and explode into thousands of flaming sparks.

It is a pity that I spent more than half my life spared this sweet torture of love, and now I am living this relationship in reverse, where the heartbreak came first and I am now enjoying the flush of first love. It is a pity that in those scant and far-between loves and near-loves I tended, I never felt the “rushing waves” of passion in my moments of ultimate closeness with the men I loved. I lived more than half my life thinking I am a bit on the frigid side. The physical closeness never figured as an important part of my life. With the exception perhaps my first love (which was as innocent as the one I am living right now) I never remembered kisses or sexual encounters with fondness or even missed them. I thought that sex was overrated. Now, in this celibate relationship I am rediscovering myself again as a woman, and I am melting at his mere words or in the blue flame of his eyes. Sometimes it makes me sad, an untimely spring so close to winter, and I keep picturing what the coming frost will do to this out of time eruption of youthful bloom. At other time I try to enjoy the energy, the sensation of being alive, loving and loved, along with the inconvenience of unfulfilled longings and desires. And there are also times when I laugh at the cosmic joke that presents me with the rush of innocent first-love, when I have already embraced middle-age and anticipated menopause.

Dear providence, thank you for the gift. Bittersweet as it is, I like it. I am learning to appreciate it. And if it was your idea of a joke, I can take a joke even if it was on me.

 

 

Falling for Aquarius II is one of the best and worst things that happened to me this lifetime. It is the worst because it will take me a while to get over him, and other men will cease to exist for some time, who knows how long. It is the best because it was a surprise, a reaffirmation of feelings I thought I was no longer capable of carrying in my heart. I have known infatuation and perhaps even lust, but I have stopped believing in love decades ago. So I was quite taken by surprise by this blind and beautiful emotion. And although it is scary to fall like a ton of bricks for the man, it is also exciting. I feel young, light and desirable again, after I got used to considering myself middle-aged.

I have tried to deconstruct this, demystify it, and call it by other names. I am still too shy and too damaged to call it love. But it comes with all its properties. I am losing sleep, I forget to eat, and I worry endlessly about him. I miss him the moment we part and get butterflies in my stomach when we finally meet again. I can sit for hours in silence just lost in the depth of his eyes. I recognize how adolescent and immature this sounds, but I am past trying to explain or reason it by hormones or insanity. I now sit back and get high on this rediscovered drug. I think I never had enough of it in the past 30 years.

I still cry sometimes. The tears were in fact one of the earliest gifts of this strange connection. I was keenly aware of the built-in loss, and unable to comprehend why I should rediscover love here, where there is no hope. Wasn’t I better off in my blissful ignorance, frozen in my voluntary isolation? I was happy, I kept telling myself.

Help comes somehow when you reach out. A friend who offers wisdom and a kind word, who tells you are not going insane or weird, merely crazy about the one you love. Take it as a gift, she told me, don’t shut him out of your heart, or lose him because of your need to protect yourself. Her advice gave me comfort. Now I meditate, read, breathe and learn to live with the twin joys and sorrows of my devotion.  It is not for me to question anymore. I carry on, and take the gift.

I met Aquarius II two days after my birthday.  I would like to believe that God has perhaps given me what I needed, rather than what I wanted. Perhaps I just needed to see and know one decent human being, who does not lie to me, as other men did, who does not take advantage of my vulnerability and weakness, as other men did, and who loves me to the extent he can, without compromising principles or breaking trust. It has to be enough for me.  I would rather carry on having coffee with him than relive any of my previous relationships.