You deserve love.

I've been trying for 8 months now to put into words exactly how I feel. Because mostly, I've been lost. Not the kind of lost when you look at a girl and you think, "Oh, poor thing, she looks so forlorn". No, I keep it together pretty well.  It's the kind of lost when you've lost the most important person in your world. It's the hole that forms in your heart that can't seem to fill back up. And it grows, deeper and darker. You start to torture yourself thinking about how he's going to love someone else, how he's going to forget you and replace you, how it couldn't have possibly meant as much to him as it did you because he let you go. These are the thoughts that taunt you late at night because you can't sleep without him. You can barely function-except that you have to because you can't lose everything. Even though it feels like you already have. There aren't any words that help. All you find yourself doing is listening to Adele on repeat and scouring Tumblr for appropriate quotes. This isn't a life. This isn't an existence. Everyone tells you that you deserved better, and there are days when you really know that's true. 

But I am telling you the truth. You deserve love. Big, stupid, crazy love. The kind of love that mixes you up and makes you feel dizzy and sick (a good sick). You deserve cute text messages and middle of the day phone calls. You deserve someone who respects you and your space, your needs and your passions. You deserve to be with someone who wants to make your life better, not harder. Someone who wants to make you better and be better because of you. You deserve someone who will do everything in his power to not lose you. You deserve a guy who will fight to keep you around when you aren't as sure about the relationship as you once were. These are things you deserve. These are things you should be thinking about late at night when you are feeling lonely. Please remember this. You deserve love. Even if you don't think so. 

Truth.

When I read this, I laughed. I cried. It is the most true thing I have read in a long time. I have been in all these situations but the last.


“

You will fall in love with someone who annoys you, whose orgasm face looks and feels pathetic. Despite all of this, there’s something keeping you drawn to them, something that makes you want to protect them from the harsh world. What you fail to realize, however, is that you are the harsh world. You aren’t their noble protector — you are someone to be protected from but it takes a lot of dates, a lot of nights where you question whether or not you are actually a good person, for this to ever resonate with you. When it’s over and whatever love is left is put back in the fridge like a sad plate of leftovers, you will finally understand that you have the power to hurt someone. You can either hurt them or love them and it’s up to you to decide what kind of role you would like to take on in future relationships. What feels more comfortable — being the one who loves more or being the one who’s loved less?

You will fall in love with someone who’s cold and always seemingly pushing you away. When all is said and done, they will be forever known as the one person you couldn’t get to love you. Unfortunately, it will hurt and sting worse than the good ones, the ones that chopped up your meat for you and picked out an eyelash from your eye and were nice to your mother, because love often feels like a game we need to win. And when we lose, when we realize we couldn’t get what we ultimately desired from a person, it makes us feel like a failure and erases all the memories of those who loved us in the past. It’s a permanent smudge on your love resume.
You will fall in love with someone for one night and one night only. They’ll come to you when you need them and be gone in the morning when you don’t. At first, this will make you feel empty and you’ll try to convince yourself that you could’ve loved this person for longer than a night, but you can’t. Some people are just meant to make cameo appearances, some are destined to be a pithy footnote. That’s okay though. Not every person we love has to stick around. Sometimes it’s better to leave while you’re still ahead. Sometimes it’s better to leave before you get unloved.

You will fall in love with the old couple down the street because to you they represent the impossible: a stable, long-lasting love. You’re trying to get someone to like you for more than ten minutes. A monogamous “never get sick of ya” love seems unfathomable. “What’s your secret, sir? Do you just say yes a lot?”
You will fall in love with smells, the good and the bad kind. You will want to wear your lovers shirt because it makes you feel close to them and you’re okay with being that PYSCHO who is legitimately sniffing their shirt in public. You will fall in love with sweat, certain perfumes, the smell of the season in which you fell in love. This particular love smells like fall. It smells like Halloween and a roaring fire and leaves and fog and mist and candy and food and family and whiskey and sex and the lint that collects on sweaters. When it ends, if it ends, you will never experience another fall without thinking of him, her, it. The memories will stick to the ground like a mound of leaves and will only dissipate when the weather drops.

You will fall in love with your friends. Deep, passionate love. You will create a second family with them, a kind of tribe that makes you feel less vulnerable. Sometimes our families can’t love us all the time. Sometimes we’re born into families who don’t know how to love us properly. They do as much as they can but the rest is up to our friends. They can love you all the time, without judgement. At least the good ones can.
This is where I’m supposed to tell you that you will fall in love with The One, a person who isn’t too cold or too nice. Their “O” face is perfectly fine and they’re not afraid to show how much they love you. This person is supposed to wait for us at the end of the twentysomething road as some kind of reward for all the heartache and loneliness. We deserve them. We’ve earned this kind of love.

So fine. You’re going to fall in love with The One. You’re going to fall in love with someone who will make sense beyond college or a job or a particular season. They’ll make sense forever and won’t ever want to leave you behind. I’m telling you this not because it’s true but because it NEEDS to be true. Everyone is entitled to this kind of love, so why not? Have it. It’s yours. Blow out the candles on your 30th birthday, holding their hand, and let out an exhale that’s been waiting for ten years. Do it. Now

”

—	The Types of People You Will Fall in Love With In Your 20s by Ryan O’Connell (via everythingendsnothing)

Sometimes, it just doesn't go away. People say that eventually the hole in your heart closes and you start to feel like a whole person again. Eventually the emptiness fades and you move on with you life. Someone lied to me. Because I start to think I'm okay then it hits me like a fucking freight train. I miss him. I miss all the things I loved about him, even the things I hated about him. It really just goes to show you that when you are in love with someone, really in love with him, you love him regardless of flaws. You love him at his worst, love him at his best. That's the way it goes. I'm trying to move on with my life. I'm trying to forget about him. But it's hard. It's unnerving that I could bump into him anywhere, at any time. And I have to accept that when I do, he might treat me like I never even mattered. That shatters me because I can't do the same. I loved him. I gave him 2 years of my life. It's not something I can shrug off. I don't know what the future holds, but I hope whatever comes next hurries up and gets here.

“The (500) Days of Summer attitude of “He wants you so bad” seems attractive to some women and men, especially younger ones, but I would encourage anyone who has a crush on my character to watch it again and examine how selfish he is. He develops a mildly delusional obsession over a girl onto whom he projects all these fantasies. He thinks she’ll give his life meaning because he doesn’t care about much else going on in his life. A lot of boys and girls think their lives will have meaning if they find a partner who wants nothing else in life but them. That’s not healthy. That’s falling in love with the idea of a person, not the actual person.” -Joseph Gordon Levitt

This is exactly what I'm talking about. I don't want someone that needs me in his life, just someone who wants me there. I'm the type of girl who likes having her own interests, her own life separate from her relationship. I never want to turn into one of those girls who abandons her friends and the things that she enjoys doing because she has a boyfriend. I hate feeling smothered. I have never needed someone before, not in the way that is so consuming. I have been in that place where I wanted the guy in my life, I wanted to share everything with him and I knew it then, like I know it now, that I would be okay without him. I was completely in love with Steven, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. I wanted everything with him: making dinner on Sundays, sitting on the porch of the house we decorated and painted together, chasing our kids around the yard, date nights on Saturdays, arguing over bills and decisions about our family, talking about our days before we fell asleep. I was heartbroken when I realized that those things were not going to happen, that the happily ever after I envisioned with this person was just an illusion.

But it's life and sometimes it really sucks. Sometimes you have to make choices that are very difficult but you know are the right choices in the end. Breaking up with Jared was one of the hardest things I had to do because he was so sweet and caring and warm, but he wasn't the right guy. At this point in my life, it's important that things feel right. I don't want to waste his time, or mine, in a relationship that always feels a little off.

Changes

Sometimes I think break ups are a lot easier when the guy is a total asshole. Because even though I know I made the right decision today, I feel terrible knowing I hurt someone that I genuinely care about. He is being so nice too. He just wants me to be happy and it's nice to have someone care about me that much. I wish it would've been love but sometimes it just doesn't work out the way you imagined it would have. It started out so well. I was so happy but as it progressed and we really got to know each other, it turned into something else. I needed to step back before I started to hate him for the things that were making me unhappy. I think I was just so easily swept off my feet that I didn't see the things that were obviously wrong in our relationship. We each have personal things to work on. I need to heal better from the last time because I was letting my insecurities from my last relationship cloud my judgment. I was afraid of being alone, I was afraid of what it meant to be single again. But I'm ready to face that next chapter and see what's out there. I feel better about being on my own. He gave me the confidence boost I needed. I'm ready now. I'm better now.

Run Ins

I saw my ex tonight. I had this unexpected reaction. I was okay. I didn't feel like screaming at him or going batshit crazy. I wanted to tell him it was okay. That we would both end up okay. That it doesn't have to be like this. We don't have to pretend we don't know each other. Although there are some days when I wake up and I miss him so much that it makes me sick that I wish I had never met him. There are days when I'm angry for what he's done to me, for what he did to us. And those days I wish I didn't know him. But we aren't allowed to take moments back, that's not how life works. We make choices, we are forced to face the choices others make, and we have to get through it. Even when it seems impossible, even when its heartbreaking to imagine your life beyond a particular moment. I wanted to tell him that it's okay if he's happy because that's what it was always about... I wanted him happy. But I want to be happy too. I deserve the same. And I'm getting there. Slowly but I'm on my way. I had more invested so it's taking me a little bit longer to get there. It just feels like a surreal moment. A split second glance then he was gone before I knew it. Like I was invisible, like I didn't even matter. That's the thing about exes, you never know how they are going to effect you. It was like getting the rug ripped out from under me in the gentlest way possible. But somehow I still ended up on my ass. I suppose that's the effect he has, and always will have. Some things never do change.

Mantra

I am okay. I am okay. I am okay.

Just keep repeating until it's true? I think I've just been feeling down from all the little reminders of everything I would like to forget. Plus I really miss my family. I haven't been home since June. That's a long time to be apart from the people who love me for me, the people I am most myself around.

I did spend my day sleeping, wandering around Hobby Lobby and painting, so I am feeling a lot better. I just needed some serious me time. I think I'm getting back on my feet. I started a new book this evening so I am looking forward to crawling into bed with that and escaping the world for a little bit longer.