Not all love is the same, which is one of the most peculiar truths in life. Your Love is as unique as the individual you feel it for. I think that’s one of the greatest paradoxes we will live through. It seems to me, there is little choice in how big it is, or how hard it hits. There’s no telling what it will do to you when you enter the arena, and that is why it can be a force we sometimes fight; because it has felt like a battle we’ve lost before.

Although it feels like you are powerless in Love, you aren’t powerless at the end of Love. You choose whether or not big Love crushes you, or if it shrinks for you to carry it in your pocket as a reminder of the greatness it once was. The desire to not be destroyed by Love is where I am.

This is a story of 14 days that coincided with my 40th birthday and a time I fell in Love. It was through a difficult turn of events that I got to step away from my uncomfortable life to experience turning 40 in Mexico; with someone I didn’t just love, but who I liked. So this is also a story about the importance of falling in Like.

For a long time I said if I ever shared this story, I’d have to call it fiction because it feels so personal. But eventually I realized it made more sense to just admit: it’s me. I’m the quiet naive girl in these pages who had barely begun to know herself and didn’t know how to communicate as well as she thought she did. I’m the one who was learning that Love can be complicated; while seeming simple to me.

One of the greatest lessons anyone learns, is knowing what it feels like to fall in love and experience connection. That was my greatest benefit; because I have been able to use that measure of connection ever since. One can break and fall apart in many ways, but it’s my opinion that until big love breaks you, a level of innocence remains. After that, you decide whether or not big love heals you. For me, it took this little trip of 14 days to finally benefit from the long journey of 40 years.

Natalie Anderson