Love, that weird game we once played

Sometimes it isn't until you sit down and analyse yourself that you realise where you are falling short. I've been a confirmed bachelor for what, 15 years now? I can't remember what it is like to share life with someone, so I am not entirely sure why I suddenly expect it to happen.

Of course, it is not just about remembering what it is like to share life with someone, it is remembering how to be, or seem, in that situation. I'm not good at 'getting' it - I consistently fail to pick up subtext and I am useless at reading between the lines. There are games played in the world of romance that I don't even begin to understand the rules of. Having said all of that, I miss it. I miss it like crazy. That giddy helter-skelter ride that whisks you away from the first moment and dumps you, months later, on your head and completely at a loss to explain any of the time just passed.

Every time I have said those three words, I have meant them, truly and from somewhere I didn't even realise I had. But it is always different, always a new feeling, always at odds with my previous understanding of love. Each time I fall, I fall differently - normally head first, always at pace. So why does this all feel like something that used to happen, but won't again? Where exactly did I stop falling and start learning to stay afloat regardless?

In truth, that is why I am missing it now. Because it feels like a story I have been part of, but my part in it has ended. I still feel affection, I still feel longing and boy do I ever still feel desire, but that leap of faith from longing to love seems an impossible transition. Right now I have an image in my head of the last girl I loved. I can see her in perfect clarity, as if she were here right now. I remember how I would feel waiting for her to come to my flat, the joy of hearing her footfalls on the stairs, the way she would smile and kiss me as we met and how proud I was to be part of something really good. She was magnificent, and I'd give anything to feel that way again. It can't ever truly be game over, can it?