About fireworks.

Falling in love with a totally random person is easy. Sometimes all it takes is a word or a gesture and you’re hooked. Consequently, falling out of love is also as easy – only a word or a gesture stand in the way of love becoming loathing.

The steps or phases are more or less the same for everybody:

• the dazzling phase (it feels like you’re on a cloud);
• the enchantment phase (aren’t I lucky to have him/her?);
• the “doubting your choices” phase (is love supposed to feel this way?);
• the eternal boredom phase (you know the relationship is going nowhere, communication is dull and you’re trying to find a way out of it. It feels like you’re stuck forever);
• and finally, the breakup (normally achieved when you’ve lost all patience and respect for your peer).

Fireworks, on the other hand, are a whole different deal. Because, to begin with, it doesn’t come from what the other person does, but from what he/she is. It strikes you like lightening and you won’t even understand why or how. Sometimes it only takes a look or the sound of his voice to know that this person will (often unwarily) play a protagonist role in your life. It’s a strong, unexpected feeling that comes from within and makes time expand when you’re together. Like in the movies. Like in that beautiful “Big Fish” scene.  It transcends reality.

Some people are so lucky as to find this person and to actually be with them. Some will never feel anything of the sort. Some will find it in their best friend, like the adorable Francis Ha. Some will find it and give up before trying anything, because everybody is so scared of feelings these days. You see, fireworks are indeed wonderful but they don’t respect timing or geography, and that’s where the problem begins. When it hits you, it won´t matter if you live eleven thousand kilometres apart, if one of you is joining the salvation army, engaged, going to a humanitarian mission in Africa or on your way to become a member of clergy. And you may try as much as you want to push it out of you, but when you do so much as to receive a facebook message from that person – after months or years – all your efforts will have been in vain. Your heart will pound faster, you won’t be able to keep from smiling.  

Have I seen fireworks? Yes, obviously. Only once. I don’t think it will happen a second time. How did it turn out? Well, it’s enough to say we’re not together. Never have been together. Don’t know if we’ll ever be.

I don’t even know if we can be. But surprisingly, I am not capable of feeling angry about it. Not a bit. Because the thing when you see fireworks is that it comes with an enormous feeling of happiness which leaves little room for possessiveness. It has nothing to do with owning people or wanting to be the centre of their existence, nor with the need to be loved and desired. There’s no lust in it. It’s different from all the romantic stuff you’ve felt before. It’s more about looking at this person with such care, love and tenderness that you couldn’t bare the thought of them being unhappy. Let alone you being the cause for their unhappiness. You just want them to find their path in life and walk it along with them. Even if it means you can’t be together as a couple, if it means supporting choices you don’t fully understand, watching from the distance and cheering. Even if it means you have to help them escape the Nazis in a plane from Casablanca with another person while you helplessly say: “Here’s looking at you, kid”.

That kind of stuff.

And you’ll be sincerely happy if they’re safe and sound, despite the fact your own heart hurts a little bit and all you can hope for your future is the regular, ordinary falling in love stunt with someone who doesn’t turn out to make you sick to your stomach in the end. Maybe you can marry, have children and a happy life just from the “regular” falling in love. Why not?

I do hope you get to see the real fireworks, though. Even if you catch just a glimpse… it’s life changing.