I’ve always been a little afraid of love, and not just the love of a boyfriend, but also the love of a friend. I think because as a child my family moved around so often I learned to not get too attached to anyone besides my family. It was hard enough to get to know someone and get close enough to call them a good friend, then have to say goodbye a year or two later. As a child it’s not so hard. Friendships come and go. Your best friend is the kid who shares most with you, but as you get older and have to say goodbye so often, you learn that having a best friend is impossible. So when I finally ended up in Wisconsin for good I thought everything had changed. I thought I would have that one great group of friends that is always portrayed in television and books. You know the group where everyone is so close, but everyone pairs up and has a best friend. And to be honest I had that for a while. But when we all went to different high schools, that group changed. We grew apart, found new friends, and once again I had to say goodbye. It’s hard, but it’s something we all have to go through. The same thing happened when college came, and by then we had already developed such strong bonds, that I thought nothing could tear us apart. Even relationships were stronger. Yet change brought distance and distance brought heartbreak. Now that I’m in my 20’s and finding that love is real, at least to the people around me, it’s even scarier. You have to put your trust into someone completely and hope that they won’t rip you to shreds. I once read a quote that said, “Loving someone doesn’t mean just giving them your heart, it means giving them your heart and trusting them to not tear it to pieces.” That scared me. I thought I knew what love was, I had the boyfriend in high school that I loved dearly, and still do. But I could never trust him not to do that. So then what did I experience with him? Many would say puppy love, or even first love. But if that quote is true then was it love at all? Were those four years just infatuation, or was it a shallower form of love? I’ll never be sure, but I do know that I envy anyone who can fully trust someone with his or her heart.
I think I fell in love again, at least close to it, but with that came absolute heartbreak. With a whole country between us, I knew it would never work, but for some reason I can’t get over him. I try and tell myself that he doesn’t care, that it was just a fling to him, and it works most days, I just can’t let him go. And I know why, he did something that no one has ever done for me before. He put himself completely out there, and showed that I could trust him. He would say things that you would assume were only being said to get me in bed with him, but they were said after. I could hear the sincerity in his voice; feel the truth when he touched me. A connection like that was scary, but it felt amazing. However, I let that amazing and scary feeling take over and bailed. I hurt him so I wouldn’t get hurt. Because I knew that with him, things could and would have gotten serious. And to be honest, that scares the hell out of me. Knowing that I could love someone so much that I couldn’t say goodbye ever is one of the scariest things in the world to me. So after I hurt him, and got away from that connection, I thought I was fine, yet slowly what I did started haunting me. Everything reminded me of him, I constantly thought about him, and I couldn’t go to the mall without having to hide so I wouldn’t see him. It was ridiculous and pathetic and I finally came to my senses and wrote him an apology letter. I figured my apology would mean nothing to him, and that he would just discard it, but one day I got a letter back. It took me awhile to read it, my stomach doing flips, but when I finally did that amazing and scary feeling I got came right back, but it wasn’t as scary. It was nice and comforting. And it grew as we hung out more. When I was with him, I was truly happy. That’s a big thing for me, to be truly happy. But as fate would have it, we both moved away to pursue our dreams, his music, and my photography. I told myself we would stay in contact, even though I knew that was a lie. After the move I didn’t talk to him for a while, and when I finally did our conversation was distant and cold. That’s when I started telling myself he didn’t care and that I was just fun for him. And then I think back to that one night when he said he would never hurt me and sounded so sincere. How can someone go from caring so much to distant in such a short period of time? Maybe it was revenge for what I did to him, or maybe he is just as scared of love as I am. I may never know, but what I do know is that love is the scariest and most amazing thing to ever experience. I may never experience it again, but as scared of it as I am, I am so envious of everyone who has it.
The whole point of this is to tell you that being in love is worth it. It’s worth the heartache and pain, but also worth the happiness and bliss. Don’t hold back like I did. Don’t ruin it because you’re scared. Being scared makes it all the more better in the end.
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