I have gotten so used to being alone. Used to being just Me. As I want, when I want. I am happy in my own private
world, with my warm life with the fuzzy edges, and the writing, and the tight circle of friends.
Interestingly, how I like to sleep is a good parallel to how I like to live. I like taking over a big bed all for myself. I want the duvet and the general space of the room all to myself too. And I sleep with the door closed to all other rooms, things, and people. Secure within my four light-blue painted walls. Part of it is that other people - even people close to me - even those in a relationship with me - feel threatening. Especially at night.
As soon as I find someone I like, I go into a knot of insecurity and anxious. Not insecurity about the other person. Insecurity about me, my ability to be a good 'other'. To live up to expectations, to love selflessly, to compromise. Because deep down there's a fear that I don't care enough to compromise. There's nothing I hate more than compromise. There's just too much of Me now - it wont fit in any space with someone else. Compromise feels like I am giving up on Her.
Because its taken me a long time to find Her.
Almost all my life I was scared of being alone. So scared that it made me find certain types of people (usually unsuitable) and certain types of situations (usually inappropriate), and hang on to them like my life depended on it. At some level my life did depend on it. Thats how I experienced it. At a gut level. Visceral. They say that all painful behaviors, all such coping mechanisms, eventually fail. The solution becomes the problem. And it did. My beautiful house of cards came crashing down.
And so I had to learn, go through the rubble, and put it back together, piece by piece, by myself. Thing is, once you've faced the worst of it, its all up from there. You find being you is not so bad. Then you get real good at it. Then you become supergirl.
So, ironically after being terrified of alone for 29 years, I’ve faced it, and now in many ways its easier than 'together'. 'Together' is risky. There's a potential for failure. It’s much easier
being me and the internet and the crazy dates. How did I get here? I’m afraid of the one thing I have always wanted more than anything else in life. It makes
me sad.
But I do know that I believe in love, and eternal companionship, and all those wholesome things. After all I have a blog with the word Love in the title. There's nothing quite like the love. Reckless hearts, the timing sucks, the time is right and the guy is wrong. But occasionally you get it right. The stars line up. And you find that affection is less
dangerous when you're not afraid to feel.
In the end life together is messy. It will probably run the gamut from who steals the duvet to who's turn it is to be on top. To in-laws, and exes, and embarrassment and
guilt, to fights about fighting and making up over never again. Its fixing the light bulb, to putting up the drapes. Its dustbuster flipflops and the soundtrack to Juno.
And somewhere in all of that, we'll find each other. And we'll get there. Wherever that is.
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