And this is my story..... It took a year to write. It took two years to post (apparently). Human's have the power to change each other's lives for the better or worse... So don't be a fuck-up, bro. It can really hurt those around you for longer than you'd think.
The Realistic View of Love
I wonder if I would have wanted to know what love could really be like. It seems that nearly everyone, when he or she is young, believes that love is a fairytale: “Love is patient, love is kind,” that love is the be-all and end-all to human existence. I wish that I could say that love truly is all of these things. Unfortunately, love, while wonderful in its own right, also comes with a risk of deep heartbreak and a bruising of the soul deeper than one knows is possible.
I was nineteen. I didn’t know anything about the world. I was still friends with the only ex-boyfriends I had ever had, one being my childhood sweetheart, one being a tall, beautiful boy with little substance—the kind that naive nineteen-year-old girls fall so easily for. I can honestly say I didn’t love either of these boys. They were movie-watching partners or someone with whom I could listen to music. They were nothing more than friends except for the occasional peck on the lips, followed by slight giggles and blushes—such sweet relationships with no real feeling. That is, until him.
I met him at a friend of a friend’s house while I was out of town on tour with my band. I was always very reserved, when it came to boys. I am not the type of girl to “throw myself” at anyone, but I told everyone in my band that he was “the most beautiful person I had ever seen in my life.” He truly was. I still remember that I was wearing my Chuck Taylor’s that I had bought when I was sixteen. I kept looking around, noticing that no one else was wearing Chuck Taylor’s; in fact, they were wearing shoes that I had never seen before-- cool ones. However, I decided that I didn’t care-- I was there to play music, sleep, and drive to the next city. He wasn’t supposed to like me back-- I was wearing Chuck Taylor’s, and he was beautiful. He kept trying to sit by me that night, and I always went to the opposite end of the room from him-- I have always been slightly cautious of being too close to anyone, either physically or emotionally, despite whatever attraction I may have for that person.
Over the next three months, he would drive into town every other weekend or so and see me; it wasn’t long before I realized that I was beginning to like him a great deal. He was interesting; he thought I was interesting. We stayed up late, we played in the rain, we smoked our lungs out, we stole each other’s clothes, we kissed and were not embarrassed. We fell in love. I still think of those days as the happiest days of my life-- I had no care in the world. I finally understood what this talk of love was-- the thing that I had looked forward to my entire life was now here. It was exactly how I would’ve wanted it.
The rest of this story feels too sad to state. I wish I could stop here, but that wouldn’t be the true story of love. See, the thing is, just as easy as it is to fall in love with the things one views as God’s most wonderful creation, it is also equally as easy to begin thinking only about oneself. After all, love “has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight” as the Beatles said.
Nine months after that, I moved four hours away from my home to the city where he lived. My family told me not to move for him, but, of course, I did not listen. This boy had shown me what life and love was about; why would I listen to logic again? Things were great at first-- we spent a great deal of time together and really got had the chance to know that side of one another that is impossible to know when distance is a factor in a relationship. I wrote a song called “Don’t Grow Old Without Me” about him, about all the things that I would miss about him, strangely enough. “…It’s the things I’ll miss when I’m away. Take me by my heart so gently and know that it always will be yours to hold. So please don’t grow old without me.” I was crying while I wrote it, wondering why I was thinking such things when I was so happy currently with him. I played the song for him. It was a beautiful, sad moment; I think we both knew that the song would ring truer than we would’ve had it. It’s odd how a person can have a “feeling” something will go wrong before it actually does. In this instance, the premonition could not have been more accurate. I don’t know what led to our downfall-- maybe too much of a change too quickly. Maybe we fell out of love. I feel that falling in love can be an accident, but falling out of love has to require some force. Maybe she was that force-- the “other woman” that every girl is fearful of when in a relationship.
She was my friend too-- we were similar in appearance, and we both played music. She secretly liked him, and she never told either of us until we took a break. I suggested the break, somehow thinking that it would bring him and I together as stronger or something. What silly notions we females can get about what causes a man to “come to his senses.” Instead, the break ended with me moving back to Shreveport two weeks later and both of us feeling utterly lost, wondering if we had made the right decision. Heartbroken does not even begin to explain the feeling that I had. I was numb. I forced myself to not think about anything that would involve my emotions-- because once my emotions were involved, I could not control myself; I scared myself. I lost fifteen pounds. I cried myself to sleep every night for months. My hair started falling out. I dreamed about him almost every night for a year after. That heartbreak magnified when I found out that, two weeks after I moved back to Shreveport, the “other woman” was pregnant with his child. Suddenly, I felt betrayed, as if all of it was a lie. Despite the fact that I would’ve never wanted a child at a time such as that, some odd maternal instinct whispered to me that the child should’ve been mine. We had loved each other! … I thought… I always thought we would be… We had to be… I still don’t really know how I feel about all of it. He is now the father of a beautiful girl, whose mother looks similar to me and whom he, admittedly, does not love.
I always pretend as if it doesn’t bother me--some odd coping mechanism, I’m sure. In fact, this is the first time I’ve written about it in detail ever. When I allow myself to actually think about it, I realize that it really did hurt me. It shapes my view of love. Did I do something wrong? Was he the one who did all the wrong? Love seems much more of a risk than a vacation to me now. It’s Russian roulette instead of hide and seek. I’m not quite sure if I view it as a painful good or an occasional good pain-- anything close to that degree of love seems petrifying to me now. However, I do know that I still think about love. I still wonder about “next time” and how I’ll do it right, maybe different.
He subconsciously did exactly what I asked him not to do-- he grew up without me. He is a father; I am a girl that is struggling to figure out how to be comfortable holding someone else’s hand again. However, now I know how it feels to hold someone else’s hand. Now I know what it is like to feel heart surges when someone says they love you. Now I know what it feels like to give everything that you have to offer to someone else. I know how to love someone, and I know how I feel when someone loves me back. I know how being betrayed and forgotten feels. In a way, it feels as if I am an elderly woman-- one who loved, lost, and saw those close to her fade into memory. I hear the bitter side in me whisper that love is not “worth it” or that I should “expect it to go bad” before it does; but I hear the child in me say that while love may not be a fairytale, it’s a story-- your own story. Love may not always be a selfless, patient virtue, but it is at least the deepest emotion I can imagine feeling. Love may not be the be-all and end-all to the human experience of life, but it is something to look forward to.
When looking back on my experience with love, it seems as if love is a multi-faceted dice loaded towards the highest number-- a game of hearts with high stakes and low odds-- a gamble. For the most part, I have been dealt bad hands thus far. However, I trust that when the cards fall just so, it will, then, be every bit worth the risk. In the words of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” As difficult as this is to type, one word at a time-- I. Would. Not. Change. A. Thing.
Corresponding blogpost that I was looking for yesterday
