The Diana Theory

A Personal Mythology of Love and Warning Signs.

Diana of Versailles

I remember the first time I fell in love. Is it appropriate to call it love? The first time I had a crush. It lasted for so many years I don’t remember when it reached its peak.

My crush’s mother was named Diana. She was like every typical Asian mother: helping with the household economy, teaching the kids, multitasking like it was second nature. I never spoke to her, but I remember her always being there — stern, present, impossible to miss. I guess I adored her simply because she gave birth to my silly little crush.

Around a decade later, another Diana appeared in my life. My last ex’s ex-stepmother. A whole character on her own. According to he-who-shall-not-be-named, she was a witch who cursed his family during the divorce. After some (very late) digging, I found out she was a natural redhead who looked just as formidable as he described. When we were together, my hair was also red, albeit a faded, dyed red. She was a lot of things, as women normally are.

As I grew up, One Direction songs have always been stuck and printed inside my head, yet one song hit harder than the rest: Diana. I speak a different language but I still hear you call.

What is it with the name Diana and my relationships with love? Or at least the feeling of it?

Diana, are you the appropriation of love for me in this life? Or are you the last thing I feel before inevitable heartbreak? Are you my personalized warning whenever I put myself into disastrous affairs? I should call you a theory, shouldn’t I?

The Diana Theory is my belief that every love in my life has somehow been foreshadowed, accompanied, or haunted by someone named Diana. She shows up before it all goes up in flames.

There was, actually, another “constant” Diana in my life that went under a different name: Artemis, Greek version of Diana. A powerful, untouchable, anti-man feminine figure. Could it be that I’ve been chasing a Diana, someone I can’t quite find unless I am in my divine feminine energy?

All the Dianas I knew in real life were all holy, a faraway, untouchable idea on their own, and the one Diana I knew through a song lived in the in-between: a whisper between comfort and ache. A promise and a warning.

Why does “love” feel tied to a Diana? Does the name itself have a presence on its own, which later gets manifested into… a warning sign? Because nothing is supposed to be forever and heartbreak is inevitable? If that’s so, I should be more than grateful that I have Diana as my personalized warning sign. The one sign I can rely on to predict a love disaster.

Maybe I also found a certain dynamic from the name Diana: for me personally it always gives off something melancholic, an in-between and a hopeful longing for the impossible.

Or maybe my Diana is not a person at all, but a fleeting thought I have right before I start packing up the remains of another almost-love, a feeling that my idea of love will always be beautiful, but always just out of reach.