Tag Archives: love

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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.

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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.

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Let’s try this again…

The last time I decided to try online dating I ended up dating a guy who tried to move in with me faster than fast, and a few other who creeped me out more than they enticed me. But, given that I’ve spent the last year or so focusing all my energy on finishing up my degree, and adding a minor to boot, I think maybe I should try again. Plus, the last time I met a guy I actually liked and gave him my number, I ended up ignoring all his calls for a week. He eventually stopped trying, and I was so utterly terrified that I could actually like him that I panicked.

Or better yet. A few months ago I was sitting at the cafeteria by my office, skimming through a magazine while I waited for my BLT, when this guy walks in. I looked up at him and I remember thinking how beautiful I thought he was, so I smiled at him and he smiled back. The lady brought my sandwich, and he leaned next to me on the counter and asked me how my day was going. I looked at him, grabbed my stuff, and just walked out. Not a word. It was like my body reacted before my mind could. Geez all he did was make small talk and I ran for my life, basically.

I think, and this is just a guess here, but I think I slightly more emotionally damaged than I thought I was. Or maybe I’ve been too domesticated, and I need to be reintroduced into the wild…

It’s like me? Meet actual people? No. I don’t do that kind of thing anymore. I work, study, and dabble in writing short stories and screenplays. But actually getting to know new people? Why would I want to do that?

Huh. That’s actually a good question. Why would I want to do that? Oh yeah, because I can’t be all about work, and I can’t keep spending all my free time with my siblings and Netflix. What kind of life would that be? Besides, I’m running out of things to write about and I need new inspiration, and stories. I need stories, but stories that I’ve lived – cause those are the best kind.

But, eer, online dating? Then there’s these possibilities…

online-dating

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At least I’m not the only one who struggles with new age dating. Here’s a great list, and hilarious too.

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A curious thought

How is it that everything in your life can change, almost completely, yet feelings don’t? And I mean real feelings, not fleeting sensations of anger or desire, but deep sentiments. The kind of sentiments you feel in the very core of your soul.

We seem to have this innate ability to forget wrong-doings, or the exchange of harsh words, but only when the feelings run deep. The deeper they run, the more we seem to overlook.

On the other end, when your feelings towards someone are less than loving, we can cut them out of our lives at the slightest infraction. Those people we can’t see to forgive, no matter how minor the injury.

It makes me wonder, if the things we find offensive and the words we hold against others ever truly offend us, or are we just acting offended because society expects us to?

Personally, I’ve been in situations where I was lied to and when I found out, I have to say that I forgave him the second I found out. But, I still punished him for the lie. I held it against him because I was supposed to, I mean, what kind of person doesn’t get mad when they find out they were lied to? What kind of person understands the liar’s situation and just, well, forgives them? An idiot, I thought.

Now that I’m older, and a little wiser I’d like to think, I realize that it was all an act and an unnecessary one too. But still, I know there are other actions I take that sometimes come as second nature, but I know they’re taught reactions because while they might be instant, they always feel a little off. Almost like you’re wearing someone else’s clothes, or playing a part in a play.

I mean, right?

Maybe I’m not making any sense, but it’s just a thought…a curious thought.

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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?

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