One True Loves

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

If he ever wanted to hold my hand, I’d never, ever, ever let go.

“I knew I was going to marry you. What was the point of waiting to buy you some diamond when I knew exactly what you wanted?”

“I have something really important to tell you,” he said. “Are you ready? It’s really important. It’s breaking news.” “Tell me.” “I’ll love you forever.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “You are my one true love. I don’t even think I’m capable of loving anyone else.”

I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I’d come to realize that extraordinary is everywhere.

Hollow and empty are terrible ways to feel when you’re used to being full of joy. But it’s not so bad when you’re used to feeling full of pain. Hollow feels okay. Empty feels like a beginning.

You know that you will never truly be free of the grief. You know that it is something you must learn to live with, something you manage. You start to understand that grief is chronic. That it’s more about remission and relapse than it is about a cure. What that means to you is that you can’t simply wait for it to be over. You have to move through it, like swimming in an undertow.

Good things don’t wait until you’re ready. Sometimes they come right before, when you’re almost there.

But realizing you want love in your life means you have to be willing to let love in.

You don’t tie yourself to something unless you’re scared you might float away.

I love you, Emma. I’ve always loved you. I never stopped loving you. I’m incapable of it. I’m incapable of loving anyone but you.

When you love someone, it seeps out of everything you do, it bleeds into everything you say, it becomes so ever-present, that eventually it becomes ordinary to hear, no matter how extraordinary it is to feel.

People aren’t stagnant. We evolve in reaction to our pleasures and our pains.

You can’t capture love in a bottle. You can’t hold on to it with both hands and force it to stay with you.

That’s parents for you. You say thank you for gifts they’ve given that have shaped your entire world and their answer is, “Of course.”

I don’t think that true love means your only love. I think true love means loving truly. Loving purely. Loving wholly.