This is going to be a long one, you’ve been warned. It’s late and I’m wired.
When it comes to relationships, men, boys, et al. I make a lot of mistakes, and they tend to be quite extreme–not necessarily the mistakes, but the certainly the risks that lead to those mistakes. The irony of it all is I’m not a person who lives by extremes, in fact I tend to veer away from them in all other aspects of my life. That’s not to say I don’t take risks, I do, just calculated and well-thought out ones; I’m not the ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ type. When it comes to men, it seems I throw logic right out the window and the baby with the bathwater.
I believe there are lessons to be learned, and that every failure is an opportunity to grow but the past year of my life have been a whirlwind of unnecessary lessons learned and damage done. It’s like I’m trying to catch up (to what I have no idea), or tick items off a checklist I didn’t know I was keeping. So, just a few short weeks ago I decided in a moment of clarity that it was time for a break. I needed to take time away from dating to sort out my mind. Time I could now refocus back onto me, my friends, my goals, and my career. (ME ME ME) But first, I’d have one last hoorah, go out with a bang!
Before meeting him I’d decided nothing would ever come of it. The distance between us was too great, one week was nowhere near enough time to really get to know someone, and let’s face it, it takes me about ten times longer than most other people to get emotionally involved–Decision made.
Perhaps because I wasn’t seeking his validation (it didn’t matter what he thought of me because in my mind I’d already placed him in the temporary box) I was candid in ways I’ve never before been (not with a man, and much less this early on in any kind of relationship). I was me. I wasn’t the dating version of me: perfect hair, perfect nails, perfect makeup, the right words, the soft laugh, the right outfit. I was just me, the same girl who doesn’t always think before she speaks, the girl who snorts when something is really funny, the girl who is sometimes incredibly vulnerable, who makes ridiculous faces in the middle of a conversation just cause, the me I am with my friends, and it was good.
It was very good, and as soon as I realized how good it could be, I realized how much I’ve shortchanged myself over the past year, or actually, over the past several years. Here I was feeling all these things I’d started to believe that I wasn’t capable of feeling–because I was broken, because I was never enough, because I never felt loved, because this and that and all the negative things that run through your mind when you’re at your lowest. And in that moment, when my head was so full I felt it would burst, he just held me and told me it was ok, and I exhaled. Allowing myself the opportunity, if only for a moment, to let go.
Then he left like I knew he would and no promises were made.
I’m not sad, how could I ever be sad about meeting someone who held on long enough to let me exhale. You share a very special place in my heart with a select group of extraordinary people. I needed this, this was a lesson I needed to learn.
