Looking Back

     I haven't written a blog post since last September.  That's pretty sad because, looking back, I had some decent stuff to say at the time.  I've needed this outlet for some time now but just haven't gone for it.  I just reread not only my final post, but most of the posts I had written before I quit about one year ago.
     Originally this was going to be a year in review, but I just realized tomorrow is September 11th, so naturally a date such as this requires one to look back a bit longer.  I can't believe it's now been eleven years since the Twin Towers fell.  That's certainly a day everyone who experienced it will always remember.  Mr. Adams face receiving the news in study hall, the way my teachers tried to keep it from us so as not to alarm us, the notes Meaghan and I passed back in forth in biology about it.
     Until about one second ago when I completed that last paragraph, I was thinking mostly about how little I've changed since my last post, but now I'm wondering how much I've actually changed since that fated day in tenth grade.  How am I doing in twenty-first grade?  That certainly sounds strange.  It feels stranger.  I certainly don't feel like a little girl.  On the contrary, I actually feel quite old.  Not matured, but aged.
     The past couple of weeks have been pretty difficult to endure, but looking back at the last year, it's not really anything new.  Well, it is, and it isn't.  That weird, oxymoronic feeling of being both hopeless and bursting with hope is still here.  My mood has bounded back and forth from excited to depressed, I've laughed hysterically and cried hysterically, I've gone out and I've made myself a hermit.  Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
     Yet, I feel like a little piece of me changes every time I get my heart broken again.  I always think my heart heals, but actually, I just suture the gash with the bandage of another man that usually tears my heart and leaves it in worse condition than the one before.  But somehow, it hurts in a different way each time.  My typical recovery rate improves with each split, but at the cost of what?
     This last one really was different.  But then again, so was the one before that.  In the past year I've had two very unique relationships, both of which have taught me something.  But the lesson I've learned, or am still learning, isn't quite clear.  And the closer I come to decoding it, the farther away from a solution I feel.
     The first relationship I mentioned really can't be clarified here.  It's one of the, if not the, biggest secret of my life (except maybe the time I accidentally got a friend's dorm party busted in college, but I guess that's out now).  I suppose it's really not consequential because it was kind of similar to this past relationship, just less meaningful, and maybe even in a way caused it.
    The key components of both were that in each I was with a man whom I loved very deeply, I felt loved me, and had my heart smashed to pieces.  What differed between the two, however, was the reality of it.  Actually, I'm not sure reality is the right word.  Basically, without getting into it too much, I'll just say that shortly after the end of that first relationship I quickly decided it was all a facade and attempt to use me in some evil way.  Was it? I can never be sure, but desperately, that was the only idea I could think of at the time to explain the pain, so as that it will stay in my mind forever.
     But, either way, it lead to the second relationship, and in a strange way is also coming back to haunt me now, even though it doesn't hurt like it did at the time.  I can't help but think that if my heart hadn't been smashed in early January, my friends wouldn't have dragged me out in late January, and I wouldn't have met Victor.  Actually, I always admired him for even approaching me, being that I was in a horrible mood that night (as I recall) and thought it was both sweet and brave how he carefully weighted his options for speaking to me because he 1) thought I was too attractive for him (not true) and 2)I looked really bitchy.  Those weren't exactly the words he used, but it was the aura I was definitely putting out.
     I really didn't want to meet anybody at that time, but I ended up dancing with him the rest of the night anyways, despite my disinterest, and even desire to flee when I learned that he was younger than me.  This relationship was different right down to the very start.  I waited nearly two full months to actually go on a date with him.  After continuing to text me in new and original ways and asking me to go get ice cream or grab coffee for nearly eight weeks, I finally gave up on my quest to be single and went out with him.  I won't go into the petty details of the beginning, but we certainly did not jump into anything, which was not like me.
     After about two months of dating, but keeping things relatively casual, I went to Israel.  When I came back, Victor told me that he was ready and wanted me to be his girlfriend.  I had realized while I was away that he was the one I really wanted, too.
     I vividly remember the night that we spent with the Bedouins in the middle of the desert.  Aside from my joy at riding a camel, buying these ridiculous woven pants, and pretending to be a snake charmer with the silly wooden flute I picked up in Bethleham, I had another experience that night.  Around midnight, our tour guide lead us out into the desert.  All of us joined hands, and walked quietly behind as we walked a frightening distance in the middle of the dark, dark night.  The sky vaulted above us in a way I had never seen before.  There are not trees in the desert, if you've never been then you can't imagine what that does for the sky.  It's heavenly.
     The next direction we followed was to form a circle, all of us facing outward, and walk twenty or so paces.  That's farther than it sounds.  After this we were to reflect on our lives.  It sounds tacky, but hey, I love tacky, and I love reflecting.  Our guide told us to think about what was really important in our lives at the moment and to push everything else out.  So, I did.  Perched on a rock I had found, lying on my back, and staring into the stars, which were countless in number, I sat. And I thought.  And I thought of him.  At that moment I knew I really loved him, that he really loved me, and that finally I had found a great person in my life.
     And for another three and a half months or so things were beautiful.  He kept me busy, but more importantly I really felt alive for the first time in a while.   Within a week of coming back from Israel we were saying "I love you" and he was talking about our future.  I'll never forget how after the concert he took me to for my birthday he said to me, "I will marry you some day."  He talked about all the children he wanted, how cute I'd be pregnant, and kept hinting at moving in.
     And he wasn't lying.  I know he wasn't.  This is what made him different.  For the first time I had met a guy who genuinely loved me, thought I was beautiful even when I first woke up in the morning, would tell me he thought that, and made me happy.  Every time a relationship ends I find a way to demonize the man I was dating, but this time I can't.  He's kind, and good, and handsome, and sweet, but he doesn't love me anymore.
     He, too, had gotten out of a dramatic relationship a little bit before we met.  But I guess she had a much larger impact on him that my secret beau did on me because he still loves her.  He didn't cheat and he was honest about it.  I have no choice but to respect him, even if the outcome is another tear in my heart.  He really did love me, I believe that even though it's tough, but somehow his love for her just crept back in.
     This hurts, but maybe not as much as the implications of this break-up.  The difference in him was not the only difference in this relationship.  I was different, too.  For the first time I trusted another person wholly and truly.  I was actually really happy and content in a relationship.  I wasn't looking for more.  I didn't want him to have more money or a better job, I felt adequately loved and appreciated, and I was just happily awaiting the future that I thought was so certain.  I never questioned him, doubted him, or disrespected him.  Those all sound like integral parts of a relationship, but despite being in many of them, I had never really had any of those reactions to a man before.
      Now I'm left questioning what more it could possibly take to have a real relationship that will withstand "forever."  If what everyone says is true, and romantic love never lasts, then why do I crave it so much?  I know my mother has a point when she says that the most important part of a relationship is security, but I know that I need emotional security and not just the financial security that she refers to.
     Yes, I realize now that with Victor I probably would have worried about him all the time if he really did become a cop or a firefighter, that his hobbies would probably get in the way eventually, and that one day his looks, as well as affection for me would fade with time, and that I suppose in that sense I might be better off.
      But a bit of me is also thinking back to the relationship I was in before him, too.  That man also claimed to want to marry me and I also shared those feelings.  The desire to get married has always been something deeply set within me, but looking back at my blog posts from over a year ago, I think I was less set on it at that time.  This struck me in a particular way earlier tonight when I read it because I thought that perhaps I had become more realistic with time, not less.  But am I really realistic?


     I don't know.  If anything, the large number of "but"s and "actually"s in this entry should indicate that.  I guess I'm just as lost as I was one year ago.  But now I've added another two chapters to the crazy book that is my love life.  And I still have the one man around whom I have cared for in a really fucked-up sort of way for years, who I continue to hurt over and over again, leave again and again, and return to again and again.  One thing I can't help but think is that I should not hurt him again.  Another part wonders if he's the one who can offer me the kind of security I need.  And yet a different part of me can't help but wonder how long it will take before I meet the next man that causes me to hurt him, and allow myself to be hurt again.
     Time passes, things change, but others don't.  I've always thought that life was linear; that it was heading in a certain direction.  Now I'm beginning to think it's a cycle.  That implications in that statement are permeable....