Staff Writer - Katrin Callender
Euphoric is the instant that your eyes land on a handsome man or beautiful woman, and you find that they’ve been looking at you too. Maybe you pose, maybe you pout (Tyra always says to be fierce, after all) or maybe you can’t stop smiling. And you try to look away, but looking away means that you no longer see him, or her, looking away makes it less real. You can’t risk it being a dream, not when it feels that good, so you look over one more time.
Minutes later you find that you’re gripping the glass and wondering what you did to get this lucky because you are the only one in the room this delicious specimen seems to want to chat with. The glass itself isn’t chilled; it doesn’t seem to have enough ice to cool you down, and the heat escaping through the pores of your face start to make you feel a little faint. Somehow, you manage to carry on a conversation. He or she laughs, as do you. You glace shyly into each other’s eyes throughout the evening. While chatting you exchange contact information, the only information you will retain after this exciting-to-the-point-of-exhaustion experience.
A few hours later, you’re at home recapping the entire scenario. You are like a meticulous film director, pulling the fragments of the evening together so they form the perfect picture. You are not above superstition when it comes to love, so you look at every event as a portend of the fact that your encounter was ‘meant to be’, but even as you are powerless to stop your own giggling, you dare not tell a soul his name lest you ‘jinx’ the romance.
Flicker or flame - How can you tell?
In these hours, and more so the days that follow, you are sick with worry but also ecstatic about the possibility of love. You wonder if it will be a flicker, doomed to fizzle out of memory or a flame that will brighten both your lives. I say, sit back and listen to your inner dialogue. The pain of unrequited or failed love and the highs of healthy, successful relationships both, teach us so much about ourselves and our tastes that we benefit from being attentive. And what’s more we often have numerous opportunities for love, so it is important to exist within any one moment, any one opportunity for love, without lingering looks into past joys or heartache, or giving way to fears of or grand expectations of the future.
