Apparently my full blown quarter life crisis has engulfed every aspect of my life and is now spilling over to my blog. As this is the case, I will continue my ‘quest
for love’ theme with this blogticle[1].
Here is the thing, despite being a self-proclaimed cynic, I
do very much believe in love. I have
been in love; I have felt it, seen it, been swallowed and blinded by it; I have given my all
to someone and them to me. Yet, like
anything else, I think it is extremely hard (a part time job really) to keep in
it’s truest form; and unless both parties are really committed to it, life
sometimes gets in the way [2]and
ruins it. That is not to say I believe that all love is the same or that it is the same for everyone, just
that the past love I have experienced, I have not felt in a long time.
That got me thinking, what happened to that ‘butterfly
feeling’? What is that, you ask? Well basically that is a very fairytale girly
way to define the undefinable term of love. When you meet someone that you would like to
pursue romantically, the hopeless romantics are usually like: ‘well, do they give you butterflies?’
I should take a brief moment to say I meet a lot of
people on a weekly basis. I am very
friendly, personable, I make it a point to be the icebreaker in most
situations; I pretty much have that ‘southern hospitality’ happiness that most
New Yorkers are missing. As much as I am
a cynic about me finding
love, I am absolutely in love with the world and the beauty in every day. So I put myself out there and meet a lot of
different people, but mainly [at least from my end] it is solely platonic.
Now that that’s out of the way, back to the point. I have been in love where from the second I
saw that person there were butterflies making me feel like I would float
straight ahead until I smacked right into them and introduced myself. Yes, I know how amorously silly and unlike me
that sounds, but it is true. While that
feeling didn’t last, being as life and personalities get in the way, that is a
feeling worth missing. So when people
ask me if I get butterflies, I mourn that time.
I miss feeling uncontrollably enamored by every little thing my love
interest does.
That’s where my nerves kick in. Am I too old for butterflies? Does that
feeling exist in your adulthood? Are all
my butterflies dead?
I like to think that many ‘mid to late twenty-somethings’ find
themselves in the same predicament.
While these questions do make me nervous, it is solely because I would
like to know that I do have that mysterious counterpart out there; made just for me and unfit for anyone else. My idea on marriage is
that you should have someone you want
to travel on your journey through this life with; they shouldn’t be something
you need. There is a difference. Too many people get married because, well,
they’re (insert silly age limit here) and that’s what they should be doing;
settling down. But the thing with settling down is, you shouldn’t have to settle!
There should be butterflies and spark and a desperate necessity to want
to talk to the same person all the time.
Not a dependency, but a happy confidence and feeling of being complete
now that you have met them.
That’s what I think finding your spouse should be about.
I know several people that found this. Some people may call them the lucky ones, but I like to think that
they just refused to settle until the universe introduced them to the person
they were meant for. I think too many of
us miss opportunities at the ‘real deal’ because we get nervous or scared about
being alone and jump into the next relationship that presents itself.
I am not that person.
In this period of self-exploration and selfishness, I have
realized that I love being alone and taking care of myself. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a girlfriend
and sharing my life with someone else, but all too often I have given my all to
someone who just didn’t understand how to fully and healthily reciprocate. For that, I am thankful. I am thankful to have had this opportunity to
get to know, find and love myself and really find out what I want in life.
I don’t need ‘butterfly love’, I don’t even necessarily want it, but I do deserve it. That is what
I will wait for. The love that clouds
your brain and stops all other thought processes, the kind that makes you stare
at your phone waiting for them to call, the kind of love that makes you feel
like you’re not yourself when they aren’t around, and the kind of love that
despite always wanting that person around, you are both confident and
respectful enough to explore life on your own.
For this reason, I will have hope that my butterflies will
be revived, one day, by someone who deserves it. In the meantime, I will continue to post
silly blogs dissecting the very allusive emotion of love, and I will enjoy
taking care of myself. Because really,
this is the only time in our lives where we get to be utterly selfish . . . isn’t
that something worth preserving and taking your sweet time to enjoy?
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