“The truth is everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”~Bob Marley
If I were to write a post about everything I know about love, specifically romantic love, it would be a blank page stained with tear drops. I remember suffering my first heart-break when I was 14 years old, and as I cried and moped around the house, my mom admonished me saying, “If this is how you are going to act, then maybe, you aren’t ready to date.” At that time, I thought she meant that heart-break was solely an affliction of lovesick teenagers and that adults both knew all about love and were immune to broken hearts. Apparently, I was either wrong about the knowledge and immunity that adults possess in this area, or there is something wrong with me, as I am not sure that I know any more about love at age 44 than I did at age 14.
Since my first real crush in the 4th grade (John, thanks for being a “crush” who did not crush my tender heart!) to my first post-divorce crush, I still am trying to figure out dating, relationships, and what not, and I am a very slow learner. I am who I am and wear my heart on my sleeve, and I am a quirky mixture of insecurities, a wicked sense of humor, varied interests and experiences, and a genuineness that leaves me quite vulnerable. So, I have no “game”; I just have myself, my social skills, and my good manners. Thankfully, I also have good friends, as one of my best friends, Wood, had to tell me that a mutual friend of ours liked me and wanted to kiss me when we were all out together late one night last year. I was surprised to learn this and immediately responded, “Why?” To which Wood replied, “Oh, girl, you need help!” That was the understatement of the year and still is!
Recently, I received so many wonderful birthday wishes and heartfelt sentiments and some gifts that truly touched my heart (Many thanks, Mary!), and but I still felt somewhat melancholy. My pen pal commented, “You are loved by so many, and you don’t even see it.” I replied, “I do actually, but there’s more to it than that. The best way to explain it is when you’re in the middle of a huge crowd, yet you still feel alone.” My pen pal responded, “I hear you, and I get it.” It is so funny how you can be loved by family and friends, but if you don’t have the love of one special person, all the other love in the world falls a bit short. I feel incredibly guilty and embarrassed to admit that, as I am extremely grateful for the love and support that my friends and family so generously bestow on me, and I really do wish I were perfectly content with that and did not want more for myself. I do want more, though. There is definitely something missing.
I am very adept at setting a goal and devising a plan of how to reach said goal, and even if I don’t reach the goal for whatever reason, I somehow come up with an alternative plan and move on. Love, though, is inordinately trickier, as it is not totally in my control to obtain, as many of my goals are. It involves another person who has their own thoughts, feelings, ideas, likes/dislikes, goals, dreams, issues, strengths, challenges, and a thousand other characteristics, qualities, and experiences that make them who they are and attract you to them and them to you. When you think about it, the fact that anyone falls in love and then manages to stay in love is nothing short of miraculous, which is why when you find someone you love and who loves you right back among the nearly 7 billion people on this planet, they are absolutely worth every bit of time, energy, attention, effort, and risk to have them in your life and for you to be in theirs. While in the midst of nursing a bruised or broken heart, I don’t always buy into the old saying that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, but I will begrudgingly admit that it is true for the most part, although there are one or two relationships I definitely could have done without along the way. Despite being clueless and weary when it comes to love, I am following some very sage advice I was given, “Be patient; true love takes time.”
It’s too bad that I cannot revamp this whole process of finding and keeping love, as I have a few ideas that would make it less complicated. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could not fall in love with someone unless they were in love with you, too, putting an end to unrequited love as we know it?! (Side note: There are few things more maddening than loving someone and having those feelings not reciprocated. Ugh!) Wouldn’t it be nice if once you knew what type of person and relationship you wanted, then you could simply go out and get it, like placing an order on line?! How much better would it be if both people fell out of love at the same time, instead of one person being left in the wake of hurt and rejection?! Who wouldn’t want some sort of sensor to detect immediately if the object of your affection really was your worst enemy or a living nightmare?! What about a crystal ball or something like it to get a glimpse into the future just to know for certain who your soul mate is and when that soul mate would arrive in your life?! If only love were that easy to negotiate and control, but it’s not. I guess, if love were that neat and tidy, it wouldn’t be love, and it wouldn’t be worth all that we do to find it and hold on to it.
There are days when I believe that I will find true love, and there are days of doubt when I believe that my best friend from college is sadly correct, that I will be alone the rest of my life. Either way, I will remain patient to see what unfolds, and that’s sure to provide more fodder for this blog and may actually result in my own imperfect version of happily ever after.
That’s another story . . .
Categories: That's Another Story
That's Another Story 
Nice post Kristi.
At least for me, it seems it takes very little time to fall in love, and then years to know what love is.
Hope 2014 is filled with love for you.
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Thanks so much, and I know what you mean actually. I am big-hearted and wear my heart on my sleeve, and these two characteristics are both a blessing and a curse. I still have many lessons to learn when it comes to love indeed. Here’s to 2014 and love!
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