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.

free falling

Sometimes there are moments in time that we would like to freeze and hold on to forever. A couple of those moments happened to me this weekend. In my head I keep reliving it over and over again, because it makes me smile.

This boy of mine, he is something special. I was visiting him this weekend and the more time I spend with him the more I like him. Which is both scary and exciting. He was sitting on one of the couches in his living room and as I went to sit down on the futon in the corner he grabbed my hand and said "C'mere you" and pulled me down next to him. In a joking voice, I asked him if I was no longer allowed to sit on the futon and his reply caught me completely off guard. He said "No, I just wanted to be near you." It was just as simple as that. But it's been so long since a boy has said something like to me that I just didn't know what to do. So I blushed and smiled and buried my head in his shoulder.

My stomach does this little lurching thing when I catch him staring at me. It usually results in me making an awkward face or mouthing the word 'what' with questioning eyebrows and a smile. Being stared at makes me a little uncomfortable. I don't know what to do. Which makes it entertaining for him to just stare and see what weird thing I will do next.

Which is something I like about him. He is weird. I am weird. And together we are the most awesomely weird that weird could be. We get lost in our own little weird world. It's been a long time since I've let a boy that far in. PC and I split two years ago, and after that I said no more! SVI was a little closer than the smattering of other boys who tried to infiltrate my world, but I used the fact that I was moving away as an excuse not to let anyone near me.

And then, well. The Boy.

He makes me want to think about the future. He makes me want to go on grand adventures. He makes me want to let him in. He makes me happy. He makes me feel like I can do anything. He makes me feel comfortable enough to be myself.

That was actually one of the first things that attracted me to him. We were comfortable around each other. We could be weird and nerdy and just plain not normal around each other with no worries of impending judgments or scaring the other person off. It was okay to say something completely and totally random and off topic or make a funny face out of the blue. I never felt that way around SVI and it has been so long since I felt that with PC that I almost forgot what it felt like at all.

I'm scared to like him as much as I do. I feel like each time I've tried to do that, I've been let down. Fear isn't something that should keep you from trying because then you will always walk around wondering about the what-ifs of the situation. But I remember the heartbreak after PC and I never want to go through that again as long as I live.

I just don't want to get invested in this boy and then get left high and dry again. But then I wonder if I am going to be missing out on a wonderful opportunity because I was too scared to try. And well bet me if I'm going to let that happen.

So I decided to jump. I want to see where this goes and I'm willing to risk the heartache to do it. Those last two sentences scare the crap out of me. Thinking it in my head is one thing, but putting it in writing in another. And this is even the second time that I wrote it down, the first being in the long conversation I had with T Lily earlier.

Fear should not be a defining factor in this kind of decision making. Not unless I'm going to be okay what-if-ing my life away. Besides that, if things fall through with this boy and I need someone to pick me back up off the floor and glue me back together I have plenty of people who will be there for me if fit hits the shan.

Things are gonna be okay. I jumped and now I'm falling. Someone catch me.