This one’s about love.

Xavier: What’s all this sh_t about love? How do we get so nuts? The time we waste! When you’re alone, you cry, “Will I find her?” When you’re not- “Does she love me as much as I love her?” “Can we love more than one person in a lifetime?” Why do we split up? All these f_cking questions! You can’t say we’re uninformed. We read love stories, fairy tales, novels. We watch movies. Love, love, love…!
Isabelle: You could just call her back.

I just watched a film called Les poupées russes and while it didn’t really teach me anything in particular, it did have some great views of London, Paris, and St. Petersburg. That was the main reason I rented it. I liked the internationalism of it and the cinematic effects made it fun and modern. As for the main story line, the main character was a jerk, in my opinion. But then again, I’ve done a lot of the same things he has in a restless search for love and comfort, whether it be momentary or eternal. I, too, can be a jerk. It’s only because I want to find happiness as much as the next person.
I guess I’ve always felt that pure happiness could be found through true love. My two favorite movies when I was little were Pretty Woman and Father of the Bride. The idea of being rescued by the perfect guy (no matter who you were) and then having the perfect wedding always fascinated me. I want that to happen to me. I’m very well aware of the fact that these ideas have been ground into my subconscious and they’re not going away anytime soon. To be honest, that bothers me. I see other people in the world whose obsessions have nothing to do with l’amour but with their art, their livelihood, their religion or something else. Sometimes I wish one of these things were my pursuit in life. Maybe I’d feel a lot less like one of the proverbial lemmings. But since I was 4 years old, I’ve always known two things about myself to be completely and utterly true: I want to be a mom and I want to be a wife.
As of late, I’ve been reading a lot of books and spending more time at home. I’ve had no major interest in dating for a while and I haven’t felt like I’ve had a real connection to anyone in quite a long time. Years, it seems. I know it hasn’t been years, but sometimes I wonder if even my last two serious relationships, both involving many a serious discussion on marriage and even an engagement, were truly full connections. I understood these partners inside and out. I understood what they wanted and needed. I thought I could give them that. I cared enough about and loved each one enough that I thought the kind of dreamy relationships we had could stay like that forever. That I could fill those roles of everything they wanted forever. Something was missing for me though, and as much as I wanted to say “No! I love this person and I can make it work!” I knew I wouldn’t stay happy forever. Only about a minute ago did I realize that the first of these relationships was far too wild. It pushed all the boundaries I knew. The second of the two was much too comfortable. It was well within the boundaries I had known. I had a pleasant spark with both of these individuals when I first met them and it grew into love very quickly. But I was never 120% sure. 98% sure, yes. Which is fine for a school exam. But not when it comes to love. The reason why 98% sure isn’t good enough for me is that a couple times while I was growing up, I asked my mom how she knew my dad was the one. She told me she “just knew.” I couldn’t believe her at first. Of course that’s not the answer you want to hear as a kid. I don’t really know what else I was hoping she’d say, but what else could she say? “Well, kid, I just walked down to the perfect husband store and picked him in aisle 5. Right height, right price, nice eyes. When you’re 18, I’ll take you down there and we’ll see what we can find for you.” I guess that could have been easier to accept. But we all know, that’s not how it works and there’s no perfect partner store.
You see, when referring to my future partner, I hesitate to use the word husband. It seems likely, but given my past and my philosophies and especially my wonderings about love, I feel as though I would be ruling out a possibility if I just stuck to a husband. Who knows if I’ll find a husband, or just a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or just a good friend who I hang around with a lot? I know some people find their soul mate in a best friend, and they never marry. Who says we have to marry anyway? Maybe I will find a partner, but we won’t marry. Maybe we can’t marry. Remember, my obsession with marriage (thanks, Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams). That and my parents have a perfect marriage—seems like it anyway. It’s been the model in my life. So, yeah, I want one too. And I want it to last forever. It’s an instinct for me: I want to find my one and only.
Here’s the thing, though: I’m scared that once I meet the “one” I won’t appreciate it. Or I won’t be happy forever and things will go awry. Worse yet, what if I already met the one and I threw it all away? So many times I’ve had that feeling I thought was the same as my mom’s when she met my dad and “just knew.” I thought I “knew” this was it several times. But I don’t trust myself to “know” anymore. I don’t know if I can love a spouse for the rest of my life. Or even for 50 years. I do know that when I have children, I will always love them, no matter what. I know that down to the blood and marrow in my bones. I’m far more sure about having kids than I am about getting married.
So what am I getting at here? I suppose I’m just expressing my confusion and bewilderment about love. I think most of us have, at one point or another, been frustrated by love. I want to know why it’s so necessary. Why am I obsessed with finding (or being found by) my one and only? I mean, at least lately, I haven’t felt as much of a rush to find love, but I still find this sentiment inside so annoying that I feel the need to rebel against it, kicking and screaming, saying “I don’t need you!” I feel the need to write a long, ridiculous post like this one. That’s how I feel about love. How do you feel?

A fabric I might be a part of.

In my young adult age, I find myself wafting between a feeling of existential solitude and a feeling of powerful connection with the world around me.  As I sit here alone in my bedroom with no one around, I feel like I am untraceable; nobody knows exactly what I am doing right at this second and I can do anything I want without the consequence of anyone knowing about it.  I am unconnected to the world.  Yet at the same time, I have a cell phone in front of me and an internet connection at my fingertips.  I can hear the contractors next door working on the neighbor’s house and I saw the neighbor across the street take off on his Triumph motorcycle earlier.  I am aware of the world around me and just the simple observance of this world affects me and my day.

I’ve been rather busy lately, what with looking for jobs, working part-time and still looking for jobs, and dating someone with whom I spend quite a bit of my non-job-related time.  I’ve also been running errands and visiting with close family members, such as my parents and my grandmother, and yet I have not had a chance to keep in touch with my brothers.  This is an odd thing for me, because I am very close with all of my immediate family members.  However, half the time, I don’t know what’s going on with my brothers anymore.  It’s not that I’ve missed the boat and I have to catch up–I can get back into the game at any time.  But the point of the matter is that the world goes on without you and gets along just fine when you’re not there.  We (mostly) all know this to be true.  And I suppose I always thought it was a bad thing to let the world go on without you.  But lately, I’m seeing it differently.  Did you ever really think about what happens to those people that don’t keep up with the world they’re used to?

I used to be all over the internet.  I had an active account with almost every type of social networking site you could think of.  I still do have a lot of those accounts, but I’ve been busy with “real life” lately.  Some of my accounts, I often forget about completely.  Some, I feel a need to maintain activity on simply due to the fact that my friends (most of whom I haven’t seen in at least a year since I moved back to San Diego) use these sites.  But slowly, my site activity is lessening all the time.  My communication with my social network in all is dying down.  I feel slightly bad for neglecting my emails, comments, phone calls, and texts.  And yet, I have to ask myself why I should feel so bad about that?  I respond to people as necessity calls for it.  But otherwise, I find myself rather liberated by not needing to be online at all times.  Sometimes it’s nice to be alone.  And by that I mean free of social networking sites.

Another thing that is contributing to my progression away from the social internet is the fact that I’ve been paying more attention to the news and politics (rather than movies and celebrity gossip), as well as taking over certain bills and payments in my life (learning how to be an adult here, people).  Through this, I feel like I really am part of the real world, as opposed to before when I wasn’t quite convinced.  I am slowly learning that the taxes I pay and the votes I make and the way I drive and the things I eat really do have a large impact.  The last thing that’s giving me a hard time now is the way I communicate with people.  I know how to be courteous and polite, but I’m forgetting how to keep in touch with people.  The kinds of relationships I had with people before are not and cannot be the same anymore.  I’m unsure of how to approach it and all I can say when people ask me where I’ve been is, “I’ve been busy.”  And I have been.

This blog entry is one attempt to hash it all out.  I know this blog alone won’t help me understand myself or the world, but it helps a little.  You see, writing is a therapy for me.  Obviously, I don’t do it enough (as you can see by the date on my last entry).  But when I do write, it’s for a reason.  I do believe in the power of communication.  I preach this all the time.  But even I have my own problems with it.  And therein lies the beauty of communication: it is one of the few things in this world that can fix itself.  When you don’t use it, problems can happen.  When you do use it, problems can happen.  But either way, you can always use it again to right the situation.  That’s what I’m trying to do now.

As for my journey into adulthood, that’s a process that will likely take decades.  I’m okay with being a 23-year-old kid with hardly a clue of what to do.  It’s a learning process and I know it’s going to take time for me.  My values and priorities are definitely doing some changing and I’m learning how to accept that.  It’s okay to not be the person you once were.  It’s okay to become a new person.  It doesn’t mean you have to throw away your old world entirely for the new one, but it’s okay to move some things around (and possibly discard) to make room for the new world.  I hope people realize that.

Until next time.