Tag Archives: intimacy

April 22, 2015 · 8:44 PM

ser·en·dip·i·tous

It’s crazy how quickly people can come into your life. Without warning, or obstacles, someone can ease into your life in the strangest of ways. You could meet someone that you connect with at the grocery store, or pumping gas, or at a restaurant on a Friday night after work.

The way it happens sometimes…It makes me think of that Michael Buble song, “Haven’t Met You Yet.” It’s a weird thing to wrap your mind around if you really think about it. How people are going about their business and living their own lives, until one day, they meet you…and everything changes.

You really never know when it might happen or just how meaningful that person may actually become. I guess life’s just interesting in that way.

I never saw him coming. I had taken a long hiatus from the dating world to focus on my studies, and really, I’d only just started to date again when I met him. To be honest, I wasn’t too thrilled to even start dating. It’s a tough thing, and stressful, and so often leaves you disillusioned and disappointed.

I’ve never been the type to fall quickly, or easily for that matter, so opening up to a new heartbreak wasn’t exactly high on my to-do list. But now, just a few months into it, I surprise myself at every corner. It’s that I suddenly lack barriers or deeply embedded walls, but it’s the fact that for the first time, I wish I did. I want to let him in, to show him my scars and tell him all my stories. The good ones, the funny ones, the bad stories, and all about the things that I never thought I’d recover from.

It seems that somewhere within my short time in his presence, love stopped being this scary thing that ended in destruction and became a happy possibility.

Don’t get me wrong, the cynic in me is still very much alive and kicking, and points out how this could all end. But for once, a part of me wonders what if. A part of me hopes that the love and affection that so warmly gazes at me though his hazel eyes is real, and true. Hopes that the safety I feel within his tight embrace will always be around, and prays that the damaged parts of me won’t be too much for his gentle heart to bear.

It’s a different part of me, one that I didn’t know I had. Maybe it’s the way he looks at me, or maybe it’s something else. I guess life’s just interesting in that way.

Some goodbyes are harder than others

Some happen in the heat of a moment, others in the midst of tears. Some happen in public places, most happen in doorways and cars. But some goodbyes happen long after that person has left your life. Sometimes the sad realization that a story has reached its end takes time to sink in. Sometimes it takes a few weeks, sometimes it takes a few months, and in some cases, it takes a few years.

Sometimes the actual goodbye is as simple as letting go of hope. Letting go of that last little bit of hope, deep inside your soul, that maybe your story just hit a road bump. An intermission. A break in time for the characters to develop and make their way back around to each other. It’s the kind of hope you don’t talk about or even acknowledge, but you always know that it’s there. Waiting. Loving. And always hoping.

Maybe you reach that moment on your own, in your own time, or maybe you reach that moment when you finally meet someone that reminds you of what it feels like to be part of an “us” again. Someone who wants to stand tall by your side and experience new things with you. Either way, the feelings that this moment entails are the same. It’s a deep rooted sadness. It’s the realization of a truth that you always knew. An ending that you tried to avoid. The ending that you couldn’t bring yourself to face.

It’s almost like realizing you’d been living your life in denial, in limbo, in a pause. Or maybe you weren’t living your life at all. You went through the motions, accomplished great things, checked off places to see on your bucket list, but through all of it your heart was closed. It was on hiatus. It was taking a long break, not by choice, but in order to survive because coming alive meant facing the end.

It’s like being there at the time of death, but skipping the funeral. At some point, you’ve got to visit that grave. You’ll find yourself looking for the tombstone and as the rain pours down, you fall to your knees in front of that place. The place where your hope died, all those years ago.

It’s an ending, but a bittersweet one because what allowed you to let that old hope go, has replaced it with a new hope. A new future. The possibility of love and happiness, after so much rain.

A Closeness You Don’t Forget

There’s something to be said about someone who you can connect with in an intimate kind of way. As you get older, relationships get so complicated and careers becoming so demanding and time becomes so scarce that those connections happen less and less. I feel like, when you’re young and in love, you love so openly. You love with everything you’ve got. I mean you give everything you’ve got, which is probably why your first real heartbreak is so earth-shatteringly painful.

For me, my first love was a relationship that started in high school and lasted well into my twenties. I gave him my heart, my trust, I even gave him my virginity and agreed to marry him. But there was something I could never give him, my forever. We never did walk down that aisle, and not because he didn’t try to make it happen, it’s just that even the thought of that kind of commitment shook me to the core. I would literally feel my throat closing up and my heart racing as a sense of panic radiated through my bones whenever I thought about it. But still, when it ended, I was destroyed.

For most of the relationship, I’d maintained this you don’t own me attitude. Just because I was a woman, to me, did not automatically mean I would clean, cook or take care of a man. Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot that I did do for him, but I just couldn’t do what was expected. Except for that last year. That last year together, I changed. I started cooking dinner, I backed down from arguments (even when I was right),I cleaned more and I was supportive. Very supportive. So when it ended, not only did I not feel like myself anymore, but I had never imagined that anything could hurt that badly.

I assume it could be compared to the pain you feel when someone shoots you. It’d sudden, extremely painful and even after the bullet is removed, the healing process is often difficult. Then, after everything, you’re left with a scar or sometimes, bullet fragments, that you will have to carry around with you forever.

The point is, and I did have a point, that once you’ve healed from a heartbreak and the love and the pain are no longer there…you can still have a connection. You may not realize it or feel it often, but if you clicked sexually, you have a connection. You may wake up sweaty from a realistic dream and long for that person. Memories of those moments might creep into your mind and make you feel a sudden urge to see them again.

People always say that you don’t forget your first love, that as the years go by, you always feel a little something for that person. But is it really love that lingers? Or is it just a lust for the sexually charged moments you shared at a young age?