Whap! That's what the thunderbolt felt like. Never felt one before that fateful day. Not sure I can stand another.

I remember the first day I saw her, the woman of my dreams.  I didn’t know she was the woman of my dreams at first, that came the moment I saw her smile.

A colleague and I were talking one day and her name came up.  He said if you ever see her smile, you’ll never forget it.  He was right.  One day, not long after, I happened to make her smile and that was it.  That was the day the thunderbolt struck and I fell in love.  As it turns out, that was the worst day of my life.

We don’t get to choose who we fall in love with.  It doesn’t matter if they’re out of your league, not attracted to you, too good for you or maybe not even the best person for you.  Love is not rational. Love is not Apollonian but rather Dionysian in nature.  In other words, love wants what it wants, period.

Throughout  the next few years, I realized how different we were from each other and, at the same time, how similar we were.  Most of all, I began to appreciate what a wonderful woman she was.  I also realized that we would never be together.

I knew I was not the man of her dreams and she would never settle for anyone less.  She had a definite sense of how I felt toward her, but I realized I wasn’t nearly enough for her.

I remember the day I accepted the fact that we'd never be together.  It felt so final.  I felt like a little kid with his nose pressed against the glass window of a candy store that would never be open.

I wanted more than anything to go back in time.  I wished I had never made her smile.  Then I remembered what Alfred Lord Tennyson had written about love and loss, 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.'

Great line, but Alfred had never met her.