love or something like it

Sometimes I go back through my old posts and remember how dumb I was back when I first started this little blog. Oh my gosh, can I just tell you? My style was the worst. I wrote about every day things from what I ate that day to whether or not I went to the bathroom. Sometimes those posts make me smile and sometimes they make me shudder.

Like all those posts I wrote about PC and how perfect we were together and how much I liked him. I was completely head over heels in love with that boy, don't you remember? I reread some of things I wrote and I can't help but roll my eyes at how naive I was about everything. My attitude towards our relationship and the things that happened between us. So much is different now, so much has changed.

For one, I will probably never love another boy the way that I loved PC. I had never been hurt - I mean really hurt before. My heart was in his hands and I had absolutely no fear of the future. I wasn't guarded, I didn't have fences up, I just loved him freely and with total and complete abandon. I loved without being afraid of what might happen. We planned the future, we talked openly and honestly about how we felt for one another and we didn't have any reservations that our love wouldn't be reaffirmed by the other. Looking back it was probably a very beautiful relationship, but it was so full of flaws that only hindsight can shed light on.

Someday I hope someone will love me again. It will be massively different, I know. We will both have baggage from past relationships - platonic and romantic. But I want to be able to love without being afraid, because right now I'm terrified of putting myself completely in someone else's hands. I have a few friends who have said that I'm not the same since PC and I split.

Well, that girl who loved him is gone. She's broken. She's guarded. She's afraid. She's different.

For as much as I like being fearless about everything, I definitely am not reckless with my heart anymore. I learned a lot by letting SVI in as far as I did. Even though we were never very serious, that relationship helped me move on from PC. It pulled me into the light and made me realize that PC was not the end of the world for me.

Now I have TheBoy, and he is great so far. We are sometimes eerily similar in our likes and dislikes. We are different enough to make it interesting and we each bring our own talents to the table. The L-bomb has not been dropped and I don't know if it ever will be between us. If it is, it might take us a little longer before we get the courage to use it. Love is such a strong word connected to a strong emotion that I want to be absolutely sure I really love that person before that word leaves my lips.

There have been times where I have wanted to say it, but I stop myself. Because loving means I'm vulnerable again. Loving means I can get hurt. Loving means giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting them not to. And I don't know if I can trust TheBoy like that yet. I just don't know.

I had a conversation with a friend a couple days ago about love and how I'm scared of using that word. He told me I shouldn't be afraid to say it and if saying that word scares the other person away then it was never going to work out anyway. Solid logic right there. But even though his argument is pretty valid, I'm still not sure I just want to drop it willy nilly. Which I don't think was the point he was quite trying to make, but still. Perhaps someday in the near future that word will be part of my vocabulary when it comes to boys, but for now there is no pressure. If it's meant to happen I think it will and I don't need to be worried about rushing it. Ever.