When people think about relationships, what do they think about? Is it the warm feeling inside, or the thought of holding others close on a cold night? Do they see what you look like as who you are, or can they see the person inside?
So many times, it seems to me that people get into relationships on a whim, and then while they are looking for how to make the relationship better, how to make it last - that's when things go wrong, and the relationship crumbles. Society has so instilled the concept of instant gratification into us that we unknowingly have sabotaged our very lives with the rhetoric, and allowed ourselves to become part of a whole that we cannot see.
Then we allow ourselves to open up, to begin to find some genuine feelings for another person. We open our hearts, and show small parts of ourselves -- freely giving others access, believing the lies that we have repeated so many times we have come to believe them ourselves. Then when things don't work out, we are shocked... and our payment for this trend that we have been caught in is the tearing and burning of our very souls, as that person that we've tried to build something with leaves.
There are many reasons, many circumstances... but the end result is undeniably the same. America, and even the entire world, has a problem with commitment. It used to be that if you gave your word, it was as good as done. Now, you can give your word in one breath, and break it in the next -- and not a single person looks down on it. In fact, we are congratulated for "seeing the truth" and the "wisdom" of our decisions that were made on whims.
Not once does anyone buck this, and respond that there is a negative side to this. That the truth is that due to poor decisions, poor choices we have a completely unstable life. As our life spirals out of control, we attempt to cover things up, and disguise our lives, pretending that there is nothing wrong when in truth we are decaying inside. Watching as our life, everything we had dreamed, slowly unravels and leaves us with nothing but a husk of who we were.
But why? To help society in some "bigger picture"? Is it because we are not willing to admit our mistakes earlier on? Or is it maybe that we are doing our best, and hoping that others won't see how much we are panicking inside... praying that there will be a way for us to come through life seemingly happy, seemingly unhurt. Is it all about face?
I've been torn in two, had my soul scarred worse than anyone could ever do to my body. What was my crime? I dared to love, and open up completely to someone... and lost them. Life seemed so cruel for taking her from me, and making me hold her as she breathed her last breath.
I managed to move on, hurt, and more attentive, more worried about what happened, and how people were treated. I opened my heart again, and was rewarded with the most amazing love that anyone could know. Less than a year later, life stepped in again -- I lost her to another life-stealing injury. For the second time, I held my love in my arms, and watched as that love died with my beautiful girlfriend.
It took longer, I had more of me torn away, hollowed out inside all the more. I managed to find a way to open myself again. I showed my love more intensely, and received a love with equal, if not greater fervor, only to have life steal that away from me as well. A promise that I could not keep, I watched as my love was burned away at the end of a runway...
Over ten years after my first love, I allowed myself to open up a little. I know it was my fault that I watched her walk away. I kept secrets, and held things back. The pain was still fresh, and I couldn't deal with it... and undoubtedly, that only served to help drive the wedge that made my girlfriend walk away. Life had found a fourth wound to claim against my love.
I talked with my friends, after all, I was a "grown up" -- I should heal faster, and know better. So I moved on... in part. I began another relationship within a few months of her leaving. My new girlfriend was so patient, so understanding. She had a troubled past as well -- and those pains became our common ground. Until that time, I had known little about cutting, less about bleeding... I learned so much. I hurt so much, but she seemed to make thing better. After nearly a year, we agreed that we wanted more, and she became my fiancee. Three months
later, on Christmas Eve, her father called me and told me to never contact her again. She had a "real man" that loved her, and they had his blessings. For the fifth time, life had won.
I was pissed off at the world. I hated everyone and everything, and my life reflected that. I lived for the night, lived for pain, lived for torment. I scared myself and kept going, no longer caring about limits. Life hadn't cared in stealing my love time and again. Love had not cared that it was tearing me apart inside. No one cared that I was seeing life as being darker and darker, a series of stages of pain that led to death, even the thought of death lost it's sting.
I didn't care about life, didn't care about love. I lived for the moment, I opened anything I could for feelings, good or bad didn't matter. It was only about feeling something, ANYTHING. Pain was pleasure, and pleasure was pain -- life made no sense, but in this darkest moment I met someone who seemed to stir those feelings that I believed had died a slow death from the losses I had suffered in love, and the two deaths of close family members.
I met her online, our first conversation was a fight. Only about seven months after I had lost my fiancee, she came into my life. My future wife. Our conversation was a fight, and argument of words. She told me that she had never seen anyone so resilient in being able to take abusive comments, yet seemed undaunted by their supposed sting. To me, it was nothing but a light chat, but she saw it as something amazing that I came back the next day to talk again.
We continued to talk, and she was able to touch me inside. She revived parts of me that I thought had died, and brought me feelings that I hadn't experienced before, even better than I had found before. Then we met in person, I flew to see her. We spent a week together -- she invited friends along, so it was a group journey, not just one on one. We played the normal games, but in it all, we solidified our feelings, found the concrete base for our emotions within each other.
Before the week was up, I proposed, and she accepted. Over five years later, with no signs, no warnings of any kind, she demanded a divorce. Four children had been the gift of our relationship. Five years of love, five years of hope -- seeing dreams come to fruition, finding true happiness in knowing this family... all gone in an instant.
Months of pain followed. Rejection that tore to the very quick of my soul, shredding the shroud of my heart, tattering the very essence of who I was. Life no longer made sense, it was all insanity and chaos. Slipping back toward my lifestyle prior to this time was a constant challenge. The dark, the pain, anything just to feel -- any of it was preferable to the numbness that came as I was hollowed out so thoroughly.
Pains I never knew existed swamped me daily, hourly spasms of my heart and soul reminded me of the trauma that was my new life. Songs, television... everything sensory became the enemy. Everything only served to remind me of what I had, and had lost. What I had lost with no warning, no signs, no explanation. It was simply gone.
The only thing left to live for literally was my children. Someone had to care for them, provide for them, and ensure that they were adequately prepared for life. They were the only thing that kept me from falling so far into the chaos that I know I would have never made it back.
So I scratched and clawed my way back from the brink. I fought my way back to life. I confronted these demons head on, and stumbled so many times I lost count. Hardly had I made it past that point when I found such amazing friends online. I hadn't gone out, I couldn't -- so my life was online only.
I began reaching out, hoping to find more people to hold fast to. More people to rely on to help keep me from losing my sanity and want for trying. My parents stepped in and began helping with my children, and I knew that were I not to be there -- my children would still be cared for.
I've watched as others claim that love is about music, about fluttering feelings inside. I've seen others get together and break up within a week. I've hated the way that women have become glorified pieces of walking, talking meat. I've hated even more that the men have allowed that to happen. I know that I am battered and broken, healing only to be broken again. Still, I look forward, and hope for a brighter future. I pray for that time when I can find someone who will love me for who I am, and allow me to love them the right way.
I long for that special woman who I can hold close, as we share our hopes and dreams as well as our doubts and fears. Someone who I can share my entire past with, and know that they will help me to carry the weight of my past, someone that will love me for who I truly am, not how I look or act or seem.
I pine for that time when I can know peace, and be content in the fact that I have found a love that is truly eternal, and will not leave me as I have had others do. That woman, I want to find so desperately, yet I am scared to try.
Every time that I have opened my heart, I have had it torn out. I have suffered three losses of love to death, and three to trusting in someone who for whatever reason, decided to give up. How can I open up, and trust again when I have come so close to losing everything: physically, mentally, emotionally -- nothing safe. How can I open up again, and allow myself to love, knowing that a single misstep could lead to a complete breakdown of the very essence of who I am.
Still, I want to. I want to find someone who can love, someone who is willing to share. I want someone who doesn't believe in secrets -- someone who can be comfortable in knowing that once they give me access to their heart, that I will do everything I can to protect that trust, and to protect them body and soul.
Still these thoughts attack me constantly...
Who would love me, with everything that I've been through?
Who could trust that they wouldn't become another "victim" of this curse that is me?
Who would be able to find a way to accept me for who I am?
Who could accept that I have four children, and still take me for me?
Who could allow themselves to open up and share with me, to trust me completely?
Who would dare to believe that a relationship would end in anything other than pain?
I believe in love, real love. The type that you give to someone, and that lasts for all eternity. Life doesn't take that love away, nothing can. Is there anyone that would even give me a chance anymore? I doubt it.
All I seem to be anymore is someone to pitty, or someone to laugh about good times. I am the guy that others talk to because I am "sweet" in that I compliment people and have some of the more "old fashioned" values in life. I'm the guy that's weak because I dared to cry in public when I was hurt.
Honestly, I have three woman that have caught my attention within the past month. The sad part is that not one answers my emails (unless they are regarding something that they wanted to talk about -- never anything about each other.), and not one seems willing to communicate in any way at all to give me the chance to get to know them any better. In real life, I seem to have taken a sullen aura, as so many people seem almost scared of me until I talk with them, and the few that are willing to talk for a bit tend to tell me that they didn't know what to think at first. I've actually had a few tell me that I scared the hell out of them until they talked with me for a bit.
Life is dark, and I seem to be darker. Pain is my companion, same as it has been throughout the majority of my adult life. All I want is a chance.
A chance to show love, to show that perceptions are not always right. First appearances seem to be everything in this world. From the way people have been reacting to me recently, even the fallen angels would have a hard time in trying to strike up a conversation with me, as they would reel back in fear on my approach.
I am not that fearsome. I am not that "chisel-cut" bad guy from the movies. I am me, a little overweight, scarred, and just me. I don't try to be dark, I don't want to be sullen. I want to find that love that
will allow me to open my heart and show the world what real love is all about.
Will I ever find someone that will even trust me enough to dare to open up to me a little? From what I've seen I doubt it. Single is something that I can't take... Honestly, death is preferable to being a life-long outcast and rejection and pain being all I can hold close on those cold winter nights. I'm tired of hugging a pillow to be able to fall asleep. I'm tired of having to always wonder how people will take me, how they will react to what I say.
All I want is love. I'm scared of my thoughts, recurring both consciously and subconsciously have been the thoughts of love or death; chasing me even to my dreams...
All I want is love, real trust, real love... a real chance to show who I truly am.
