The European Experience # 95

"Sorrow, betrayal, jealousy, and hate are what we think will kill our love, but it is Hope that kills it in the end," he quotes from a short story he has read. (I am paraphrasing of course. It is not the words, but the idea, that cuts me to my core.) I am not sure why this has come up in our conversation. In my amorous euphoria, the details of my dream like experience is his overwhelingly intoxicating presence are hard to conjure. Yet, this quote from an obscure short story only a writer could have ever read seems apropos to describe my current fast-and-hard love-lorn once-in-a-life-time experience. Maybe these words have that universal power that applies to all moments of life...
"Hope is what kills it in the end." It would be foolish to hope for more than what is offered: He must return to Berlin, and I must return to Canada. He has a life with a boyfriend and a career, and dreams and goals he must pursue, and I have a life with friends and family, and dreams and goals, I know I must return to. It is foolish to hope for anything more than the next breath.
I shouldn't aim for anyone to bend their life in order to merge it with my own. To hope for that is selfish. To hope for that is not an act of love. I can not hope for the future, I can only hope for the present. And if that present includes a breath shared between us as our lips meet in a kiss, I shall treasure that moment for what it is in the present, and refrain from projecting an impossible future upon the simple beauty of such a loving act. All I should hope for is my next breath, and with that, I only hope for life.