Casting "The One": An Actor's Love Story
- 12 hours ago
- 4 min read
An Instagram post about enduring love leads me to revisit my first romance and the fantasy that followed me for years. Looking back, I wonder if I was chasing love—or simply an idea of it.
Instagram Knows Too Much
While scrolling Instagram recently, I came across one of those AI carousel posts featuring famous couples who had been together for twenty-five years or more: Pilar and John Wayne, Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards, Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti.
I found myself staring at their smiling faces, wondering: How did they find each other? What does lasting love actually feel like? How do two people choose each other over and over again?
The questions surprised me.
I've fallen in what I thought was love so many times I've lost count. Cute guy. Says all the right things. Tells me, "I love you." I say it back and—voilà—my brain convinces my heart this is the one.
Apparently, my imagination has always been an excellent casting director.
An Actor's Greatest Casting Mistake
At sixteen, I was certain I had found my forever.
I was in Colombia on vacation with my family. I had known Pacho since we were practically in diapers. My first cousin was married to his older brother, so we saw each other every Christmas, usually playing hide-and-seek at his mother's house. The summer before, he and his cousin had stayed with us for a week while touring the United States. He was fun to hang out with. As a sophomore in a girl's school in New York, I had very little interaction with boys.
Because it was Christmas in a small town, we kept running into each other at nightly parties. We'd pray la novena (dedicated to the imminent arrival of the baby Jesus), dance, and send globos—colorful paper balloons lifted by a tiny burning disc—floating into the night sky. Looking back, I'm amazed we didn't accidentally set half the neighborhood on fire.
Everything changed on December 30th.
He kissed me in a booth at the local discotheque. It was dark, lights spun across the room, a disco ball shimmered overhead. It was my first kiss. I still remember his tongue in my mouth, soft and warm.
I wanted to drown there forever.
After that, we saw each other every day. Since our families were constantly together, no one thought much when we'd disappear. We kissed on sofas, behind fences, in parked cars—all very innocent, staying well above the chest.
He followed me to Bogotá. We had dinner. We promised to love each other forever.
The next day I flew back to New York in a river of tears.
He wrote me twice. I wrote back.
Then...nothing.
Six months later I saw him at a friend's house. He was distant and barely spoke to me. What I thought had been everlasting love simply evaporated.
Years later he married, divorced, and I happened to be back in Colombia.
Apparently, I hadn't learned much.
He swept me off my feet all over again. We made plans to meet on an island in the Caribbean and keep the fantasy alive.
Rinse and repeat.
This time there weren't even letters.
Just crickets.
The actor in me kept casting him as the leading man long after the script had changed.
Years later, while I was married and back in Colombia for a wedding, we ended up at the same dinner party. Apparently alcohol brought back his memory. The star of my teenage love story got a little too friendly with the wine and suddenly couldn't stop flirting with me, orbiting my side of the room, and staring at me in front of his wife.
It was surreal.
Did a small part of me feel vindicated after all those years of heartache?
You betcha.
The Myth of "The One"
Looking back, I don't think I've been chasing love as much as I've been chasing an idea of love. An idea born from a sixteen-year-old's first kiss, reinforced by romantic movies and every story that ends just before real life begins.
Maybe the problem starts with the phrase fall in love. It sounds like we're tripping into a hole instead of walking toward another person.
What if love isn't something you fall into?
What if it's someone you walk beside?
Someone you admire, respect, laugh with, sit comfortably in silence with, and still want to kiss after sharing a plate of spaghetti like every romantic comedy ever made.
The sixteen-year-old in me still wonders from time to time: if WhatsApp had existed back then, would my first love and I still be together?
Then I remember reality.
He lives with his family on a mountaintop surrounded by snakes and scorpions.
That's a hard pass.
I'll let Green Acres have the last word.
"Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue" --Lyrics by Vic Mizzy, from Green Acres Theme Song
