Not prone to Giddiness; or I knew I was falling in love

I think that was the first time I made her laugh: the time I told her that I wasn’t prone to giddiness. I was having trouble sleeping because there were only about 5 hours till I had to get up to go and meet her brother in law at the airport.

Yeah, that. There’s an extraordinary sweetness about meeting each other in airports. Then there’s the suckiness of having to say goodbye. The hello’s are mighty sweet. Possibly even okay to get giddy over. The goodbye’s induce all kinds of personality revealing weirdness. They have a name for it in the separation cycle. It’s called the withdrawal and adjustment phase. I don’t care what they call it. Having a name for it doesn’t make it easier. There are tears and it sucks.

The bit about falling in love

I’m not prone to giddiness. Falling in love came on slow. We didn’t speak it for a while. We let ourselves sit with it. We wanted to know we weren’t underestimating or overestimating things. I was still healing from a broken heart when we met. He knew that rawness. He let me talk about it. He talked about his. We all have hurts. Baggage. People hurt each other. They hurt each other more when they’ve said they love each other.

So Back to that giddiness…

So back to giddiness. I feel like that’s better left to those who’ve not lived a nomadic life, those who’ve got the luxury to be giddy. I’ll settle (by which I mean anything but) for joy: calm, deep, hopeful, joy. I’ll settle for not being a teenager or the thrilling feeling of things that I remember when I was 22 that have no real possibility of a future.

I’ll settle for that realisation each day that things are some kind of wonderful. That I know what it is to be loved by someone is not settling at all. It’s been worth waiting for.

It’s been worth waiting for.

Believe me, I’ve made some mistakes, I was a late bloomer on the front of self-awareness and was never really good with taking care of myself. I mean I’ve always talked a good game, but really, I’m a giver. I’ve always been a natural nurturer and I’m empathetic to the hilt. Neither of this is great when you’re trying to make a careful and wise decision about who to walk with in this world.

The Portuguese have a word which sums up the feeling of missing someone or something, they call this intensity ‘missing’: saudade. I guess i would describe it in the form of an aching or a longing. But still, rather than giddiness, this – saudade – is what I feel whenever we are on opposite sides of the world from each other.

I’m not prone to giddiness, but this is the real deal. This time I’m not just learning what it means to love, but more so what it means to be loved, to be loved and not judged or second guessed. To be told that your empassioned speeches are his favourites just like my quiet and peaceful moments do is pretty darn special.

Listening. Observing. Participating. Writing. Photographing. Reflecting.

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Anna Blanch Rabe is an Australian-born writer and photographer. In 2014, she will embark on an epic adventure traveling Overland From Australia to London by train and ferry. You can follow this adventure on Not A Pedestrian Life, or Facebook. More of her photography can be viewed here. For more domestic things take a look at Quotidian Home or her previous website, Goannatree.