"Self-portrait as a grown-up woman"

(oil painting on canvas, 24X36, 2007)

"Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it."
Jerome K. Jerome

"I constantly think about you. I think about you when I watch TV, when I'm talking to people and furthermore I think about you at night, because you come to me in my dreams. I hide my feelings from people, because if they were actually able to know my thoughts they would've sent me to a nuthouse or they could've written the world's best romantic novel. I love you...."
(a passage from one of my favorite love letters)

I consider myself very lucky because I was able to experience true love several times in my relatively short life. I could probably write novels about each one of my serious romances. Sometimes I feel that simply remembering how much I loved and was loved is enough to sustain me for the rest of my life. “Self-portrait as a grown-up” is a tribute to the very first time I felt like a heroine in a romantic novel; scared, excited and profoundly in love.

Even though that particular love story ended in heartbreak, (since the person I was in love with and I ended up being separated by the Atlantic Ocean), I will forever cherish the fact that it existed, since it made me realize what real happiness is. There's nothing on this earth: not any accomplishment, not any amount of money that could make people happier than love does. If you haven't loved, you haven't lived. Granted, love does make people miserable at times, but suffering from unrequited love is still much better than any other type of suffering or not feeling anything at all. I still believe that it's better to jump head first into romance and in the worst case scenario end up being happy for one day with the object of your affection, than to be eighty years old and wonder what would've happened if you had enough guts to approach that certain person... tter to jump head first into romance and in the worst case scenario end up being happy for one day with the object of your affection, than to be eighty years old and wonder what would've happened if you had enough guts to approach that certain person...