Chapter 2: "Between the Lines"- Sara Bareilles

Todays chapter was inspired by the song "Between the Lines" by the fabulous Sara Bareilles. If you haven't checked her out already, do it. Really good stuff.

Thanks to Stephanie Meyer, E.L. James, Nicholas Sparks, and John Hughes we are all programmed to spend our lives searching for our one epic love.  The one that will rock us to our core, turn our world upside down…the kind of love people write stories about.  We look for it everywhere, and whether we want to admit it or not, we want the Romeo to our Juliet, the Darcy to our Elizabeth, and the Mr. Big to our Carrie. We have this subconscious understanding that if we can find that one person out of the 7 billion people on this earth that we are meant to be with we will, in theory, be whole.  They will complete us in a way that we never thought possible, and the void our man-less heart possesses can’t be filled despite our best efforts, not even five cats will do.  So we wait, spending our downtime picturing the perfect guy that will swoop in and save us from our lonely, mediocre life, give us the perfect relationship, and eventually deliver us the perfect proposal that will lead to the perfect marital nuptials. PERFECT. We have this cookie cutter idea in our heads of how the romantic parts of our life are supposed to transpire. Truth is, love is messy. It’s tiresome, frustrating, and a lot of the time keeps us confused. It comes at the most inconvenient times, with a person we never expected…but the honest truth about love is that it’s a beautiful distraction.

Often times when we feel like we have found the “one” we devote all our time into making sure they stay.  We morph, change ourselves to try and become what we imagine they consider perfect. There’s that word again. We listen to their music, watch the things they like, and before you know it, we consider those things our own. We leave a tiny trail of our former selves behind us, we don’t need those parts of ourselves anymore. We're complete, remember? Sometimes we get in so deep we let them do as they please and reassure ourselves that they love us, even if they have a hard time showing it. I witness this firsthand, often.  Our significant others tell us they love us, they wouldn’t be the same without us, and they will take care of us. This is all well and good, and it sure does make us feel good inside. BUT, call me crazy, but shouldn’t their actions reflect their words?? When did it become the norm to keep us at bay by telling us sweet things and not acting upon them?

 So how do we cope? I think we secretly love the pain, we all have a small case of masochism inside us.  We let them treat us like shit, but we always go back for more.  Why? Maybe it’s because we dread starting over again, we’ve worked so hard on building this bond that we would rather hold onto an unraveling relationship than leave the pieces behind.  Maybe we’ve forgotten how to be alone, how to function in society without someone on our arm.  So we hold on through the pain, convinced that we can survive life like this. Perhaps if we wait it out they will realize that what you have is real, that you are in it for the long haul. 

We focus so much on making ourselves available that we don’t see the signs that maybe it is time to leave, that our relationship is unsalvageable. We cling tight to the good times that we’ve shared with a person, and they cloud our judgment.  We block out the bad times in our brain, even if they outweigh the good. Let’s say, hypothetically, that we do get the courage to leave.  We pack up our baggage, mentally and physically, head toward the door with our heads held high, and then there he is, standing at the front door wondering what the hell is wrong with you.  Brace yourself, because you are about to become the bad guy.  He’ll bombard you with “Why?”, “We can work this out”, or my personal favorite, “I’ll change, I swear I’ll change”. So now we are faced with a choice, do we turn our back on the person who knows us better than anyone and start fresh, or do we stay on the verbal assurance that things will be different this time? While the thought of leaving the one we love sounds tragic in its own right, it’s not even the scariest possibility. What happens if we start to leave and they let us walk away? Talk about a lightning bolt to the heart. This romance, our “epic love” that we put so much effort into is gone in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.  The idea that perhaps they wanted this all along, it would certainly explain his lack of love.  So what do we do then? Continue to walk away and let the love fade with time, or do we suddenly become weak again and beg to try and work it out? Either way, we lose once again.  It would be so nice to win for once, wouldn’t it? Gah.

Let’s be honest, the easy choice is to stay with him, we do love him, after all.  In my own life experience I have allowed people to stay in my life far longer than I should have.  But how are we expected to let go of something we have always wanted, even if the realities outweigh the promises. The reality is, our choices define us.  We make the choice to sit here and stare at our phones, holding our breath every time it rings, hoping for anything to let us know we were on his mind.  I feel a stab of defeat as the days rack up that we go without speaking, but per usual when I feel like I’m done, his spidey-sense goes off. He knows just what to say to keep me “just so”.  I live on the promises, thrive on the pain, and love the moments when he does something to make me smile.  Because through all the hard times, and the good, we are all on this journey to find our epic love.

 

"Eventually all the pieces fall into place….until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moment, and know that everything happens for a reason"-Carrie Bradshaw

Well, it has happened.  I have been bitten by the blogging bug, sank its teeth right in and refusing to cease. In consequence, you great people will be subjected to the many random, and at times long-winded, thoughts that bounce around in my brain from day to day.  A friend directed me to a quote some time ago by the famous writer, and infamous drunk, Ernest Hemingway.  He said "write hard and clear about what hurts", and I intend to do just that. 


A few of my best girl friends have come to me lately for relationship advice, why they chose me the Lord only knows.  Ask anyone about my strong suits and I guarantee that at the very bottom of the list would be "great with relationships". Hell, I don't even think it would make my list.  Nonetheless, these people come to me with their questions and concerns, so I feel obligated to put my best foot forward and offer the best advice I can. 

We were talking the other day about men of our past.  How do we move on? When did the moment come that we knew in our gut that it would never work? What steps do we take if they present themselves in our lives again? All these questions we agonize over. We sit and think about these hypothetical situations of what we do, how we react, if we see our ex's out somewhere.  This very close friend of mine told me that a guy she dated briefly, but fell in love with instantly, had contacted her a few days prior.  "I just sat there and stared at my phone", she said with a wide-eyed gaze, "I found it so hard to breathe, and at the same time a rush of anger flew over me and I swear steam came out of my ears." Naturally I asked her what the message said, thinking that maybe he had sent her some surprising declaration of love or an affirmation that he had moved on with his life. He had written her the simplest form of platonic conversation, one word, "Hey". This one, simple word that has turned my normally sane friend into a stock-raving lunatic.  All it took was a single word from him to send her flying off the edge again, enough to fill her mind with memories that she had tried for so long to block out. So after listening patiently to her ramble on about this guy and the new Shakespearean situation of "to reply or not to reply, that is the question", she finally looked at me and asked, "What would you do?" Undoubtedly, this question sent me on a dumpster dive into my own past, my own forgotten memories, my own male counterparts, and my own similar situations.  What do we do when someone of our past decides to turn around?  There are plenty of quotations out there that offer fortune cookie advice about our present selves and our past, "Don't answer when the past comes calling, it has nothing new to say". I have to admit that when faced with a ghost from my past it is extremely easy to let my mind wonder on the what ifs and the well maybe this times of the certain person.  Far too many times I have put my brain on cruise control and allowed my emotional, hormonal heart to take the wheel and charge full steam ahead right back into the same situation over and over again. Most of the time, when the past grows tired of me again and moves on its merry way, I more or less do the same.  But this particular day, sitting in front of my lost friend I couldn't help but wonder, how many times does our past come through our door before we decide to change the locks?

How do we know when something is really over if it presents itself in our lives over and over again? How do we distinguish the line between the girl who is waiting to the girl that just looks pathetic? Truth is, we can't.  Some times the long nights we spend lying awake replaying particular conversations in our minds, picking apart and dissecting the words we exchange with another person and constantly looking for ulterior meaning to everything they say make it seem like we act crazy for nothing.   It is absolutely exhausting, and given enough free range, it can consume us.   But then we have those days when everything lines up how we think it should go and we think I can wait, I can do this. We battle internally with ourselves over what our friends think, what his friends think, do we really deep down believe that this is the key to our happiness, and if it is, how do we make it stay?

In the end, we have to decide what we can live with.  The decision is our own, and given enough time to clearly think we already know the answer.  Can we live with(out) this person, or can we live in the situation we are in? Ultimately it's a simple question to ask others, but when we look in the mirror and ask the same to ourselves, the realizations can rock us to our core. 

So that's the question I asked of my friend, what could she live with? She sat there quietly for a while, contemplating what had just been asked to her. She never gave me her answer, but that didn't matter.  From the look on her face I could tell that she knew that answer, and that was good enough for me.  I did let her in on my observations of my own self. I asked for my past to come back,  I put myself back in this situation, so I knew the risks of what I was getting into.  The things he and I have shared with each other are for only us to know, and I have a fear that it will always be that way.  But I still believe in it.  That is the root of all of this, my faith.  That is what keeps me going, and the moment I feel that my faith is gone, I will be also.