Wednesday, 11 May 2011
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Falling in Love With a Fantasy
When I was 16, I traveled with my family to a little town in Italy, where my aunt and uncle live. My family stayed in this town for two weeks, enjoying a blissful life of mornings on the beach, ice cream, aperativos, playing in the piazza, buying vegetables and fresh bread at the outdoor market, three hour long dinners on the terrace, and nights spent at the bar with the other kids from the town. It was here, in this lovely paradise, that I first fell in love.His name was Luca, and though we could barely communicate (my one year of high school Italian and his broken English made deep conversations a struggle), we were head over heels. We shared days on the beach, rides on the back of Vespas, and a salty Mediterranean first kiss. Then, we had to return home to America. Luca and I kept in touch by letters - good old fashioned hand written love letters.
He would write them all in Italian, and I would pour over them with my Italian-English dictionary, looking up each word I didn't understand and piecing together his romantic sentences one by one. I wrote back in Italian, letters that took painstakingly long and were probably very grammatically incorrect. We drew pictures, sent photos, and on my birthday, he sent me a beautiful silver heart necklace.
We communicated for two long years. We were not "dating" long distance, and I spent time with other boys in high school and I'm sure he had other girlfriends. But through our letters we remained dedicated, faithful. The next time I saw Luca, I was 18. I had traveled back to Italy after my high school graduation to visit my aunt and uncle, and to see Luca again, hoping that the spark we had two years ago might still be there.
To keep a long story short, we were both disappointed. Our initial reunion was awkward, both of us embarrassed after so long and unsure of what to say. Our communication was still difficult, despite two more years of Italian classes and his efforts to speak English.
I had made friends with a few other American students who were studying abroad, and he became jealous at the fact that I could communicate so easily with them, but that we struggled. There were more awkward moments, miscommunication, silences. Eventually, we both grew angry and frustrated and my last days there we hardly spoke.
I left Italy with zero feelings for this boy I once thought I loved, and when I returned home I laughed at myself. I pictured him coming to visit me in my bustling concrete city, how uncomfortable it would be, how out of place he would look, sound and feel, and all of the sudden everything became so clear. I wasn't in love with him, as I had so naively thought, but with the idea of him. I was in love with the romance, with the language barrier, the mystery, the sun and the sea and the taste of fragola. I was in love with Italy.
It would be easy for me to dismiss what we felt as infatuation, and at some level it was. And yet, there was something so real about that feeling, so new and exciting, and ultimately important to that time in my life. Luca and I are still in touch on occasion, as friends, though neither of us really speak about what happened all those years ago.
The truth is, we were both in love... with an illusion. The feelings were real, but the subject of our affection was not. It was the circumstance, the romantic setting - and we each filled some kind of romantic fantasy that the other had about what a love like this could be. It was the perfect time and place, to fall in love.
As I've grown older, I have had momentary infatuations, or crushes, that have happened in similar circumstances. I meet or see someone in a certain location, setting or during some event, that fills some kind of fantasy of what love could be like in that romantic scenario. Like the boy who played the cello and gave me chills, or the German boy who pedaled me home on the back of his bike, or like Luca, that floppy haired Italian boy who first taught me what it felt like to have butterflies.
Have you ever fallen in love only to realize it was actually the fantasy, or the "idea" of this person that you were falling in love with? Have you ever had a momentary crush on someone because you saw them in the perfect moment, the right time and place?
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About the Author
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- From: micah
- Name: micah
- About Me: I am an artist, designer, writer, thinker, dreamer, world-traveler, lover and friend. I am passionate about connecting with others, sharing ideas, collaborating, spreading knowledge and positive energy through whatever medium, whether it be my art, my writing or my personal interactions with friends and strangers.
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Comments (18)
Sounds like Letters to Juliet, except, you know, not.
ohhh yeah, definitely, but i really enjoyed reading this story, was refreshing as many love stories seem all too much of the same. this one's unique. ;)
totally. I was at M&M's world in las vegas and while I was browsing the store to buy souvenirs, I noticed this late 30'ish to early 40's good looking man with salt and pepper hair and he reminded of richard gere in his prime in the pretty woman movie. I didn't make it obvious that I noticed him
but I was browsing the same area near where he was to glance at him
then this older woman was talking to him about some shirts that he was looking at. I think she was his wife
he was literal eyecandy for that moment, but nothing happened. I grabbed the keychain that I was going to buy and left
ah, this has happened to me all too often :/ it's always nice to dream...
Not to say I have, which I haven't. I only had a summer crush ;)
ahha going through this right now!! met a boy 2 summers ago at myrtle
beach. have talked just about every single day since then. i saw him
again last summer and it was awkward...but we still talk. i dont know
haha
Arguably, I think we do it all the time when we fall for someone we don't really know, considering a majority of relationships start out between those who do not really know each other. We enjoy our lover's good traits, and ignore - for a time - their bad traits, creating the illusion of an ideal partner. Then reality sets in
.
A similar thing happened to me while in Australia. I met this girl, Sarah-Jess, and just went head over heels. I didn't know a damn thing about her and we never had the chance to kiss... I eventually came to the same realization you did; it was the mystery, the foreign, the unexpected. Whirlwind romance is a romance in and of itself.
That is so romantic... even if it was just illusionary. *sigh*
i can relate. i moved to the states when i was 11, and theres a boy where i used to live who had a crush on me for my last semester there. When i came I think it was my lack of acculturation I was attached to all my friends back in Shanghai, i made friends here but I still felt my life was back there. I called him on a biweekly for 2 years and he out of the blue professed he still "love" me( even though weve only hung out briefly during my last semester there and although we enjoyed each others company but we weren't the best of friends) LOL i was beaming for months after until I realized how unrealistic I was being, I can't see him regularly, and the excitement fizzled, and soon after i felt more in sync with my friends in the states than back in shanghai and stopped calling frequently. we still talked on the phone but stopped bringing up what we said about our "love" until junior year of high school. i recently added him on renren(chinese copycat facebook) and im sure he and i both laugh at how naive we were back then
haha, all the time... I think i've been more in love with fantasy than anyone else in my life... xD
Love the story, so well written :)
Wow...reading this was like deja vu, not joke!
I met a guy with the same exact name last summer, and we had the same kind of unrequited "love" between each other. The first time we met was on vday with a group of single friends, and we kicked it off great, dancing all night just us, but we never had a long conversation about each other or anything, nor did we exchange contact info. Then we meet again in the same type of setting, a month later, and same thing happens. I still think about him more often than not...I guess it's the mystery behind the what if, or maybe it's lust..or like you said, i guess i'm still intrigued by the "illusion" i have of him and how we were together in those moments, and that's what makes me day dream about him still from time to time. good points brought up, nice post.It's so satisfying to read a story about how the real world works. And major props to you babe for not being a dumb-headed female and tear eyed about, neither.
I am man, and I have spoken on this issue.
Of course! True love is (supposedly) when the idea of what you want the that person to be fades and you see and love that person for him or her.
What a beautiful story :)
I've been in that position, sadly my relationship wasn't even long distance and it took 8 months of arguing, crying and hurting each other until I realized that it was all a dream...
yes.
thank you. i really enjoyed reading this. i think i finally realize that my most recent relationship was just a fantasy.