Openess

"And this kind of love makes me feel ten feet tall

It makes all my problems fall

And this kind of trust helps me to hold the line
I'll be there every time"

I try not to be bitter or cynical when I hear this song lyric, I can actually listen to this Sister Hazel song now and not burst into tears. It’s been almost a year; it doesn’t feel like it though. I remember in college I got my heart broken by a guy that started dating someone else but forgot to tell me….I thought I’d never recover from that constant ache in my chest. I find however my most recent experience is a whole different ache. It follows me, surrounds my whole life it seems. Not in a cry myself to sleep for weeks scenario like college boy was but more like a constant badgering in my head. My only conclusion is that this is due to the fact that I still feel fully responsible for putting myself in the situation to begin with as if my heart shouldn’t have been so trusting.

When I was 16 I was so smitten with a boy that I found out later we were playing the roles in ‘She’s All That’, except I didn’t know. When I was college, see aforementioned story. When I hit post collegiate lifestyle with grown up decisions I found out when the relationship consumes your whole lifestyle; who you talk to, what you eat for dinner, how you spend your summer vacation…having that all change in a blink of an eye leaves you with such a different perception of what you thought your life was going to be and how you will survive the wreckage.

I find myself searching, not for that perfect person that will make me feel safe again but searching for the me I used to be. I know she’ll never actually surface again because she no longer exists due to the wounds inflicted. I guess my only hope is that one day a better, stronger, more resilient version of her makes an appearance. I struggle with balancing the openness I see as weak and the openness I see as being therapeutic for my own good whether I like it or not. I was never the type of person that needed another person to feel whole, that was until I opened myself up to another and realized my version of whole was so meek compared to the possibilities of sharing that stature with someone else. My only mistake was taking that risk with someone that couldn’t carry their own weight when it came to living up to that stature and wasn’t willing to carry mine when I was broken.

I don’t break that often and I fully expected that when I did I’d have someone there, my only fear now is that that person doesn’t exist. I realize this is cynical and I'm fully aware of this. Honestly deep down...and right now I mean really deep down, I know they do and my surface level cynicism is simply that, surface level. Who are we kidding, I'm too much of a thinker to actually believe living the life of a cynical, bitter, jaded individual will get me anywhere I want to be in life. God gave me too much faith for that, my parents taught me to much about courage for that, and my heart has too much love for that...but for now cynicism may win over.