Can't Help Falling In Love

Reading many of my posts you will know that I've learned the best love comes with time. It comes with assurance, with trust, with security and complete faith. I've come to believe that these thing most certainly do not happen over night. And for some strange reason, once I realized this to be true, expected the whole world to believe it too. After all at a certain point shouldn't this simply be common knowledge? Clearly I was wrong. In this chapter of my life, I find myself encountering people with extremely fairy tale like fantasies of love (which I'm pretty sure is going to offend someone).

It's been so hard lately to share my perspective on this subject. Mostly because I'm stubborn and refuse to adopt anyone else's philosophy on the topic. But secondly because it is truly unsettling to constantly change the idea of love simply because some love-craved person wants to feed you their psyobabble to make themselves feel justified in their romantic decisions. (Again I don't mean to offend, just ranting)

One night over glasses of wine with some lady friends, the topic of men came up (obviously not a surprise). What I absolutely could not internalize was the fact that these women whole heatedly believed that one could fall in love practically at first sight. They truly believed that love had limits i.e. you could fall in love, you could fall out of love. Apparently one can have love for someone, yet not love them at all. One can know love within the first few weeks of meeting someone sans any trial or tribulations.

That very discussion reminded me of the song "I can't help Falling In Love" (Side note: absolutely love the Bob Marley version. It is the only version I can listen too.) I listened to the song and for a moment almost fell into a trans.

Maybe, when caught in the moment, love is the only word we can use to describe the overwhelming sense of euphoria. The moment it passes our lips and is received by all to hear, it almost as if life itself has changed.

I guess in essence love is anything an individual defines it to be. But if little time has passed, or when we find a relationship has reach it final point, how do we know whether we were ever in love, or just fools who rushed in?

Maybe I'm Just Too Open

It's late, I'm emotional and for all sense of logical thinking should not be writing write now. Yet here I am with fingers steadily moving across the keyboard opening my heart to this not so private diary. The next few posts or so will be kind of raw, unedited and short. I've been exposed to a lot of experiences over the last few weeks that have unconsciously kicked me back into a places where I need to truly internalize my actions.

What bothers me tonight, is an inability to be vulnerable. The word itself sounds almost disgusting. The very idea of intentionally putting oneself in a position that may or may not cause you harm sounds audacious. Borderline idiotic...well just idiotic. However, with all my reservations about being vulnerable it seems that vulnerability may be the key to the missing piece of my life.

I was always taught never to reveal too much. Experience with being too openly emotional around the wrong person has cause me to harbor the belief that opening oneself up does not provide power, but instead stifles our growth. It was moments when I would reveal a private thought to a close friend, only to have them expose that very  information to the world that caused me pause. It happen when I would go out of my way to do something special for a virtual stranger, only to realize that they care nothing about my welfare nor do they even remotely remember my gratuitous gesture.

These bits of vulnerabilities were small, yet that simple exposure meant something to me. So here I am at 26 wondering why it's so hard to maintain new relationships/friendships when my mind keeps reminding me that at any given moment, someone is waiting for the moment my guard goes down to destroy my happiness.

Whether intentional or not, the fact is opening oneself up is a risk. The question that haunts me right now is, when looking to make new found bonds as a twenty-something, should we take that risk to be vulnerable or simply live with the idea that a cautious perspective is just a way of life?