It’s a lot of responsibility, holding a heart. It’s not something you play around with, and i know that now. I know what it feels like to hold the broken pieces in your hands and wonder what your next move is. I know how much it hurts to walk around, barely able to pick the pieces up, trying to figure out how to act calm and collected while silently plotting a pity revenge of some kind. In a small way, we feel that revenge is our right don’t we? That royal infraction on our heart deserves a kind of decree in the end. But when you’re standing there, broken, it’s hard to pull yourself out of that moment. It’s hard to see the end game amongst so many feelings. The anger makes us freeze in limbo for a few days, or months, or years, until we wake up one day and realize we’re past it all.

I’ve been on both sides of this heartbreak. I guess it kinda comes with the territory. At the age of 27, my life isn’t exactly conducive to relationships at this point. I’m kinda like the show Lost when it comes to those things… on the island, off the island, wait now we’re in the future? For real though, this is real people shit! I’ve spent essentially my entire life convinced that I don’t need a relationship. Even after I made a plan for Thailand, everyone I dated in the 2 years leading up to the big move began with a conversation that said, “I hope you realize I’m moving and this can’t be more than a casual thing”. I became too good at “casual things”, too good at saying goodbye, and I’ve always been an out-of-sight-out-of-mind kinda gal anyways…

Flash forward a few years, or 7… and I can’t say I’ve gotten out of that place exactly. I haven’t allowed myself a relationship, and I most definitely haven’t learned how to make myself vulnerable to anything or anyone besides my career and travels. It scares me shitless to be completely honest… I guess I’ve became so good at being alone and learning to rely on myself that it’s hard for me to give someone my heart and say, “hey, play nicely please”. Because love isn’t like that, it isn’t wrapped flawlessly in a box with a pretty bow and a users manual. It’s messy! It’s one person looking at another and trying to recognize them in a way that’s genuinely who they are. It’s me trying to break down a person to their core and still love every flaw and every part of them. It’s exhausting is what it is. And we’re never ready for that kind of responsibility. We’re never ready to hold someone’s heart, we’re not the best at it. But we leap all the time, straight into nothing because we’re human and we WANT to feel something. Anything. Especially love. We know what it’s like to love, sure… but to be IN love? Nah, that’s rare. I’m struggling right now trying to find my vulnerable self. I can’t remember what it looks like or feels like to be in love, but that part of me is becoming awake for the first time in so long. I’m trying to be honest with myself and with another about the state of my heart. I’m trying to fall in love at some point, I’m trying to let that feeling in.

At the end of the day I do want the happy ending. Unfortunately for me, I find it really hard to open up to anything unless I know it’s not permanent. If it has an end game, and I can say, “well hey, I leave in a few months anyways” it’s easy to me. But that’s not the point of relationships. You start relationships because you’re saying to that person that you want to see what can happen with them, not that you’re giving it a test period of a few months and then jetting across the country or world, never to be seen again. That’s not how this works. I know that now.

I know all of this now. But mostly I know that I want all of those things despite my vulnerability and the possible pain. I want to take that risk on someone even if it means that I could end up stumbling around trying to pick up the pieces of my scattered heart. I feel sorry for the great guys in the past that genuinely tried to give me their heart when I didn’t play nicely with it. We owe more than that to eachother… I owe more than that. I want to open myself up to all of the messiness of love. I want to leap without an end-game and without expectations. I, more than anything, owe that to myself.