Did You Ever Really Love Me, Stebie?

Ive been asked so many questions, about different friends' love lives, and the advice I give them is always the same ol' song and dance. I always tell people to follow whatever their heart tells them as long as they have thought it through.

The interesting part of the story is that, I have never been one to follow my own advice. I have never been one to take calculated risks, instead I jump without a parachute or a safety net. In love, Ive never been as lucky as I'd hoped to be. Nor have I been happy about it.

But something Ive recently learned or discovered, if you will...

Is that love begins at home. Its not your house, or the material things that have accumulated in it or sometimes not even the people living there. Its the memories that you hold close to your chest for safekeeping. Love is that stain on the living room carpet where you and your cousin had your first fight. Its the smell of your grandmothers perfume. Its the tingle in your spine when you embrace your mother after a long journey (be it emotional, spiritual, or physical). Love is omnipresent. And if you are blessed enough to have that foundation, never ever forget that your roots are deeply planted in love.

I forgot that once... I almost forgot where I came from. And God has a way of breaking us down to build us back up into who he intended us to be. He has a way of showing us that we are home. That we are our own homes, and love starts within ourselves.

Love is not just a feeling. Its a responsibility. An action.

Its a responsibility to yourself, first and foremost. Because you owe that to yourself. You owe yourself the freedom to love and be loved. And often times we get so caught up in the loving part that we forget to be loved by our own selves. We forget that the most important love of all is self love. It can be a battle, but no one is responsible for you, except you. And thats a hard pill to swallow, but a necessary one nonetheless.

So in your endless journey of discovery, remember that love begins in you. Find it in yourself and the rest will fall in place.

Love Rain

The rain fell
It reminded me of you.
You always smelled like the rain...

Like sweet honeysuckled
Dreams drenched in bliss
Coming to fruition...

And
               so
                           I
                                        danced.

                                              I

                           Danced

        in the

R
a
i
n

With angels like
Heaven couldnt
Hardly wait to
Touch my skin.
I felt  f   r  e  e d  o  m
in my fingertips
Passion in my soles
I felt your spirit
Do
       P
         i
           r
             o
                u
                   h
                   e
                 t
              t
           e            
        s

Around my heart
Until the moon
Chased the clouds away
And I felt
Your  smile pour over me

It rained  today.
It reminded me of you.
You always smelled like the rain.

First Time

(No thats not what I meant by first time, but on the same subject...)

You know that feeling when you kiss someone for the first time?

That moment when you feel magic in your fingertips.

Like...

This moment will never fade and you can feel yourself spinning from your pinky toe to your outermost eyelash.

Every muscle in you surrenders to the unadulterated titillation of this persons mere thoughts.

You can hardly breathe, yet somehow you feel more alive in that very moment.

You gain more clarity in that feeling than you have ever cared to comprehend.

That moment...

That Feeling...

I wanna live for that moment.

I wanna die in that feeling.

Ive been chasing that "first time" feeling since my first love, and for once Im discovering it in myself. Although, completely by accident, Ive found  Im finding something in me thats scary, and amazing, and insightful, and potentially disasterous, and magical. Im finding peace.

Last month, I had no idea what my next move would be in terms of career, love, money, LIFE. This month, I still have absolutely no clue. The only difference between last month and this month, is that Im not trying to force anything to happen. Someone once told me "its gonna be what its gonna be" in reference to a relationship. I wasnt able to receive that message at that point, but I think I get the correlation to all aspects of life now. There will be days when shit is just not that great. Roll with it. It cant last forever, right? Take those days, hours, minutes, moments to reflect inwardly. Hey, you might find that its complete and utter bullshit. But what do you have to lose by trying? A couple of minutes?

Figure out a way to find solace in your storm.

Only you know whats best for you. And only you can do that.  So do it. Whatever works. Do it.

You're Being THAT Person, Aren't you?

Once, I had my heartbroken by someone that kissed my collarbone like he had fallen in love with my ancestry. He said my name like he knew who I was, even when I didnt. He held my hand like it was the last dying memory he would grasp onto. He made me safe. He made me whole. He made me new. He shattered me. And everyone thereafter, cut into me a little deeper.

But a long time ago, I told myself that it was time to change things if I wanted to attract the right type of guy. Like most clueless people I affiliate with, I changed. Changed my address, changed my phone number, changed my job, changed my look... But aint shit changed in my love life and I couldnt figure out for the life of me what I had done wrong.  So I started thinking, I keep meeting the same guy, repeating the same actions, and feeling the same way when it doesnt work out. Hmm, what about this sounds wrong? ALL of it, super-stupid. Duh Dont be Dumb! Youre being insane. Litrally.

Then HE came along. The different one. You know the one who sleeps next to you instead of with you for months until you decide you want to ride the steel force, and hopefully it gives you the addrenaline pump that your body has craved since you laid eyes on him. The guy that whispers Shakespeare in your ear, and buys you flowers because its 6:09pm on a Tuesday. That guy. He saved my view of love and relationships. But the only problem with that guy was that he couldnt change my view. Because I hadnt changed anything to begin with, I was the same me. The same clueless me that kept getting hurt.

At some point, when you keep getting your heart stampeded over by the million man march, you have to accept responsibility for the fact that you are doing something SO WRONG! Sometimes you need to step back from the dating scene and just evaluate. Something about you is wrong. But no one ever wants to accept that theyre not perfect for themselves, and our desperate and lonely asses (myself included) will carry out this fallacy of a relationship just to pretend we're happy with our current situation.

Why is it so difficult to change?

This brings me to my latest situation. After taking time to really acknowledge and deal with whatever is wrong with you, you need to let that shit settle. Thats where I went wrong. I recently started/stopped dating this guy who had a way of making me feel like nothing even mattered at all. But when you get the puppy home, theres shit and piss all over your carpet the next day. Thats not how it went but it  usually is. This guy showed signs of being a fatal attraction early on. Its not that he's a bad person, quite the contrary, he's a wonderful person. Just not for me.  He revealed his true character way sooner than was expected, and I was still busy falling in like with the representative he had originally sent on our initial dates. (Theres nothing wrong with that, Everybody does it) What is wrong with this picture though, is that even when he explicitly told me "THIS IS WHO I AM!" All I heard was Beethoven's 5th Symphony. I heard the optimism in his rejection, I heard kindness in his aggitation, I heard "the one" instead of "one of the options". I heard my desperation drip from my ears.

This is not the problem either. 

The problem is I could see it all happening, and I knew I was wrong, but I couldnt stop. Thats when I started to step back (still a piece of me  holding on to that rep from the first date [a rather large piece if we're being honest].) I realized he couldnt give me anything I needed, because I couldnt give him anything he needed. But I still wanted him. Selfish, right?! Well tell them that its human nature... We want what want, when we want it, and how we want it. But when your wants take precedence over your needs, you are in so much trouble...

You are knee deep in a kiddie pool of your own excrement...

Gross!

Dont be that person, nobody likes that person. You dont even like that person. But you put up with being them because youre desperate, or youre lonely, or youre afraid to change, or you dont love the true you that you are. Whatever youre problem is, find it then fix it then let that marinate in your soul for a little bit. You'll be better for it. And when you are, you'll know it. But until you know, sit your lonely ass and figure out your problems.

Moral of the story; Get your shit together, life is not a fucking fairy tale.