This doesn’t go with my goth tough-girl image, but I am a sucker for romantic movies. Not chick flicks exactly, but actual love stories. I can roll my eyes at a lot of romantic movies, but I’ve been snuffling away in the middle of my Virgin America flight for the last hour and change, watching The Time Traveler’s Wife. Then again, I also cried buckets when I read the book. I sobbed so much, in fact, that Paul actually heard me from down the hall, and then indulgently chuckled when I came to bed after finishing the book.
But then, most of that was because those kind of love stories remind me of how much I love my own husband. Paul and I have been lucky enough to find each other, to fall in love, to have that kind of true love. That’s really what makes me cry. It isn’t the sad love story, it’s that strange heartache that goes with true love, that ache of what is almost too much joy. I never knew how much I could love anyone before I met Paul. After three and a half years together, and one Benjamin, I still love him more all the time. I still believe, just as I did when we first fell in love, that he is my True Love, the man I was meant to marry. I can count a hundred reasons that I love him, but it all adds up into something intangible. I will love him for the rest of my life, and, if its possible, beyond that. (For lack of a better word, I’ve been gifted by the universe with the sheer coincidence of finding my husband at the right place and time. I know how fortunate this makes me.)
So that’s why I cry harder now at sentimental movies than I did when I was a teenager. It’s because I have proof that there’s that kind of ridiculous true love out there. Knowing it exists makes it affect me even more in movies or books. And it also makes me want to count down the hours until I can get home to my husband (about three, right now…two more on this plane, and then another hour to get my car and drive home.)
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