Love and Like

Recently someone I deeply care about but don't know as well as I want to, my Cami, fell in love. It's beautiful, and hopeful, and lovely. I feel so happy for her, for this turn of events. She's one of the most deserving people I know, who has yet to be appreciated for who she is and what she could bring to someone's life. When I used to pray, I used to pray for this for her. I have worried for years that it wouldn't happen, but felt more hope in her case than I now do for mine... All because she keeps the door open. No matter how much she has been through, and it's a lot, she has kept that door open to love. To be loved, and to give love. She's so willing to enter into things (or at least this is how it looks from the outside) and give it a try. You know what I would really like now? To attend her wedding, since I think one day she'd like to have one. To watch her smile and kiss her groom and see her live happily with her life entwined with someone who she loves and trusts her daughter with for the rest of her life. She's so deserving, and I dreamed about this the next night after I read how she feels about him. I hope it's one of those dreams that comes true.

With that door open to love there are so many more chances!! And this time, when she fell, she fell fast. So did he. While it's a bit mushier looking from the outside than I think I would like in a relationship, haha, it's sooo cute and happiness inducing at the same time. (Then again, I can be quite silly amounts of romantic when it's reciprocated. I gave up on that years ago now.) She sounds happy, the photos make her look happy, and it gives me a vicarious warm fuzzy for her, it makes me want to meet him, to see them together.

I know that's how all the romances say it happens. Movies and books sometimes ruin us for the times when love is hard, because they make it sound like it's always supposed to be easy or it isn't true love. Magazines don't help either, stating DO THIS and all will be perfect. Which is bull. Still.... I think there is something to be said for falling fast. There's also something to be said for going through something adverse early on, it either breaks you up or makes you that much closer. They have, and are that much closer I think (mind you, this is all vicarious, we live much too far apart for my total happiness and don't talk enough for me to really know).

When I have allowed myself to fall fast for someone, I devoted my all to those relationships. Sadly, they didn't always work out... but it was not for my lack of trying. I hate that relationships are the one thing you can give your everything to and still have them fail. I hate that the addage: put in what you want to get out - doesn't apply to them. I HATE when people tell me that too, because sure it works in a healthy relationship... but in an unhealthy one you just end up abused and overextended. I think when you devote your mind to being in love, it's more likely to last, you're more likely to be less conditional with it, you're more likely to make it work because you believe in it wholeheartedly (forgive the pun here). That's all love is, a belief in someone and in your being together. So when you allow yourself to fall hard for someone and fast, and choose to believe in it deeply, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. My favorite kind of prophecy.

That's what scares me. I'm afraid to believe in love anymore. I've felt lost, and broken, and discarded by overextending my belief in an 'us' that was only being sustained by me. The last time it happened it took me over a year to recover... which disgusts me. Now I'm terrified to let go and love someone completely. It scares me that I'll stay so guarded that I won't want to do it again. As of today I've been in a relationship with SP for close to or over a year, depending on how you look at it(from when we had THE conversation and when we met, respectively).... and I let myself love him occasionally. I said it first, by almost two months. That makes no difference to me surprisingly. He says it to me very rarely (3 times total? I think?). I'm much more comfortable saying, "I really like you." I think he is too. Sometimes that thought alone makes me wonder if we are doomed.

Land of Dairy: Commitment Revisited

SP's and my communication is up 400% or more since the trip. This COULD work maybe for a little bit. Again... lol... look at all those IF and SHORT TERM words. I can't even think about committing without feeling odd. I KNOW that what I really want in my life is a forever. Deep, deep, deep down.... I'm a romantic. My own brand of romantic for sure, but definitely a romantic. I am capable of lifetime love. I'd prefer to be allowed some openness in sexual expression in that love (women or men depending on what gender I am with, threesomes, all sorts of play but only for both of us together), but I am likely capable of subsisting on love without that (as long as there is sexual spice). I want the love my father and my family never gave me. I want the unconditional. I want the commitment. Shit, for that I'd probably even take marriage.

If I'm completely, 100% honest with myself I know that yes I would like to be married one day - not necessarily in the eyes of the government or the church but at least in the eyes of myself and the person I am with. I like living with someone. I like the knowing, the sex on tap, the commune with another person who cares about you. I prefer living in a relationship, though I'm no slouch out of one either. I like myself most of the time, but I have no belief that anyone else will. Maybe it's my abandonment issues rearing their ugly head on that one, who knows.

Oddly enough I have started to view child rearing as more of a challenge and to think I might just have something special to offer a child one day too. Let's not get carried away with that though, it's a passing idea, my gut reaction remains NOT ME. Adoption looks sort of like a boot leather sirloin would next to a chateaubriand life of no kids at all to me. That's the only change though, is that now they both at least look edible. Before this last year adoption looked like eating cat poop would next to the glorious steak experience that is a perfect chateaubriand. Just for frame of reference.

The more I force myself to think about these thoughts I avoid, the more comfortable I become with them. That's the idea... I hope I can open my own door again.