Grown Up Love

I've been thinking a lot about love lately. No surprise there. It's a thought that is never that far away. I've started thinking about promises of forever.

In grade school, your forevers last for weeks. High school, they last months. In your college years and the few years that follow, those forevers can last years. Then you have that one promise of forever that will last, well... forever. Sometimes, even though I'm a hopeless romantic, I tend to look at love with my type A, meticulous personality. I make lists and I try to scientifically prove that I can make a promise of forever and keep it. Not for myself, but for Tyler. It's scary. I think that's how you know that you're really in love, when it becomes self-less. It stops being about me and what makes me happy and becomes more about how I can try not to ruin the life of the person I absolutely adore. I'm good at ruining things. I'm an expert at sabotage and I'm really good at blaming others when it all falls apart. I'm also really good at pretending that I can still run about doing whatever I want. But grown-up love it's like that. Grown up love isn't about what makes me happy, it's about doing whatever it takes to stay in love another day. And that will mostly be what makes me happy but sometimes, that very thing makes me want to throw things against the wall.

It's almost destructive to get everything you want. You spend so much time wishing for that job or that right love to come along so when you finally get it, you start to wonder if you even wanted it at all. So you start make shiny new wishes that put your other wishes to shame. That must be the secret to happiness-having it all and not taking another bite. To be content with all you have, with everything you wanted.

I wanted to go to college and make something of myself, to separate myself from everything I had and everything I knew. I did it and it wasn't enough...

I wanted a kind, trustworthy, best-friend kind of love that would never break my heart...

Somedays, it's tough. I have had moments when I'm sitting there, catching my teardrops in my hands wondering why I thought this was what I wanted in my life. I've thought about throwing in the towel but then I have that moment of realization. Nothing ever worthwhile is easy. And sometimes, to get what you want, you have to work at it. Most days, everything is pretty near perfect. I couldn't ask for anyone better. I just get scared, you know? I get scared of promising someone forever. Especially someone who was given that same promise before and it left him shattered. But as each day goes by, I am more assured that this is the person I need in my life. This is the person it all led up, why all those other forevers didn't last. This man makes me whole. And I need to work on not sabotaging all my happy because of my fears. You only get one forever, and I want to make this one count.