Time Limits For Love?

It can be over in an instant, but is their a time limit to how love starts?

In an era when everything is fast, downloadable and texts are delivered and answered at the blink of an eye, I recently told someone that I loved them, only to be told that it was too fast!!

What every happened to love at first sight!

I met someone on a flight from Paris to Bahrain several months ago. On boarding the craft and seeing her standing in the aisle for the first time my breathe exhaled at her absolute beauty. Had you asked me then, I would have stated it was love at first sight for sure. She glowed with an aura of perfection about her. Not only did she look great, she stood tall and straight, my parents told me that’s how proud people st and. She had obviously had theluck of good parentage as well. She was not shy, she spoke with confidence and she was professional in her manner.

As a journalist I have found that to interview some one I’ve never met before, I should always watch them enter a room, the way they sit and the manner on which they leave the interview and the room in which it has been conducted. Body language and mannerism are a bigger “tell” about a person than words. We can all learn a script, but its hard to hide foibles in our mannerisms, hard to find the right way to be polite, a gentleman or a perfect lady at a whim, if we have not practiced the art form since childhood.

As I watch this young lady go about her duties she was unfaultering. Professional, educated, proud, well spoken, not shy and polite. She was perfect! I was in love.

Sadly , professional that she was, I found it difficult to garner her attention for longer than a momentary Please! Thank you! or Can I borrow your pen?

The 12 hour delay in our flight robbed me of a time to talk at length as sleep filled the remainder of the flight, thanks to the peace I find at altitudes.

On landing, phone number was handed to this gorgeous angel of the skies and hopes, prayers and waiting began.

Two days later, I had to relent. She was not going to call! Some one lucky had perhaps already married her, although no ring was seen upon her finger nor any ring mark, or perhaps my number was merely one in thousands that this poor young lass received per month. So amazing was she, I would not be the first to have noticed.

Had she called I would have done anything to make her happy. I knew from my journalistic summation of her, that she was worth fighting for. If in person, away from work, she was even half what I viewed at 35,000 feet, then I was truly in love. My heart had found a home!

No call came ! Heart broken, love had been lost within two days!

That’s how long it took for my friends to tell me how stupid I had been thinking she would actually call.

I am not unaccustomed to the loss of love. Two days was slow. I have, as many other will have too, lost those close to me. Too many to be fair really. I know how fast a love can be gone, life extinguished, hearts broken. In these instances love can be taken within seconds. A blink of an eye can change your universe for a eternity.

If love can be found at first sight, then love too can be taken, at last breathe.

Three and half months have passed since the flight with the Angel.

A few days back she called. Well it started with a text. She was fishing to see if I indeed remembered who she was. I did.

As sad as I had been from no call, my heart leapt with the giddiness of a teen from the very first text.

To have kept the card! To have retained the number! To have called three months later! Meant to me, there had indeed been a feeling in both directions.

I had summed this young lady up into a package called “perfect” on the flight. To speak with her and hear the fun, the accent, the attitude and the manners in her voice, added to the list of amazing attributes had given her from my journalistic summation, made me fall in love again three and half months later.

But I spoke the words within a week.

“I love you,” apparently needs time.

Perhaps it is her past that makes her sceptical! Perhaps it is mine that makes me rush! Perhaps I value life too dearly and know better than many how fast life can be gone! Why wait to tell someone something when your heart is screaming for the words to be spoken?

Things are progressing , but she fears I’m somewhat half crazed or just a wordsmith thanks to my writing, and she shy’s away now when I express my self too deeply.

Part of me understands, part of me does not! I know what I feel, she knows too what she feels.

But am I wrong?

Why should I withhold the truth and the feelings of love that god has given me for another, just because enough time has not elapsed.

I love her now, as much as I did the first time I laid eyes on her. Time has taught me, that my first instincts where right, but my thoughts have never changed. Should this relationship go the distance, I can tell you now, twenty years from now I will feel the same.

Some times in life, when we meet the right person, the planets align, the sun shines brighter and our hearts open up and engulf our brains.

I know love! I know what true love feels like and this it! Life is for living, love makes that living enjoyable. I have never known such a happy world as since the first text message of my new found friend.

I hope she can one day see that, and her heart and mind can feel the words are true.

If not, then a few weeks or months from now, you’ll have to read a column about how fast a heart can be broken.

Because unlike needing to take time to say “I love you!”, when it all comes to an end , few worry about how quickly they cut the ties.

Seems then,  everyone but me, is in a rush.