The Replacements

Yesterday the replacement moved in. Harsh sure, but it's how I've been feeling.

Ironically enough, the replaced was once the replacer as well.

I had this realization today that sometimes you just have those people that aren't permanent.

Sometimes we go through life and someone comes along and it's fleeting, but it's wonderful.

They make you laugh, and they become the person you want to be around as often as possible. This can go both ways. It can be platonic, and it could also be a case for the hopeful romantics.

For me it's usually the latter.

Usually I meet someone, and I get to know them and for a good few weeks it feels like it may be developing into something more. Something that could last.

Being that I live in a seasonal town, and up until now a seasonal mindset, it never lasts.

People leave, people drift away, and people break your heart.

You go through a time where you wonder why? Why did I get so close to this person that I knew would leave, or I knew it wouldn't work, or I knew wasn't the right person.

I've also been in the place where I ask God why. Why was I allowed to fall in love with these humans. Why did God put such amazing people in my path that were just going to end up leaving.

I still don't have an answer, but I know that eventually it gets better. Eventually the pain of someone gone goes away, and then the space in your life is filled with someone new. Sometimes if you're lucky, they worm their way into your heart.

Yesterday the replacement moved in.

I've heard great things.

I've heard and seen that he's cute.

I've heard he is super sweet.

And I know that this isn't his fault. But i'm upset.

He's here instead of  you.

How is it possible, that I can't stop caring?

Somewhere along the way, I think I lost my ability for self-preservation. I think I've lost my ability to say no, and I've lost my hope that anything can come of all this.

I get to the point where I would fight for you. I would defend you with every last breath, even if they are right. Even if everything they say is true. I would defend you.

Not a day goes by where you don't mention some girl who means a little bit more to you, at least for that second.

I'm back and forth, up and down, and yet, you're always there, and I'm always wanting you to be.

I always want you to be there. Hear your voice. See your smile when you're making fun of me.

You infuriate me more than most, and yet you make me smile a lot more than the rest.

You make awful things seem cool and sometimes you wishing to seem cool to others makes me feel awful.

I think that you don't get it. You don't understand how truly great you are. You don't see how your big heart could be meant for someone who is going to appreciate it, instead of young girls who are going to use it for their benefit.

I so desperately want you to see what I see.

I want you to see the dedication, the drive, the heart, the light and the beauty that I see in you.

You are so much better than trying to fit in with the people who will never be what you truly need. The people who live the lifestyle because they don't know what real love truly is. God's love.

And you know His love. You can be such a light for His love. You can spread hope, and joy, and you can be so much more than just someone who tries to fit into the mold that the world has set before you.

You are so much better than this. You deserve so much more than this.

Yes I've said all this before. You don't know the extent of my heart behind it, but you know that I care. At least there's that.

I care about you. I care if you get hurt, or if there's a girl you're interested in who is seriously not good enough for you. I care if your dreams come true. I care if you leave and I care if you stay. I care...

The Hello and The In Between

When it all comes down to it, I guess the person I'm mad at the most is myself. I let my mind, and more stupidly my heart, go there. I checked onto a train going the opposite direction and left them to fend for themselves in the midst of your being.

I wrote off all reason and logic and let my heart really go with it.

I let my mind run with all the encouragements from outer sources, that the feelings of which my heart was taking on could be reciprocated.

I let my mind be changed by positive feedback.

I let my life be turned upside down by your heart.

I let everything that I held dear become nothing compared to being able to spend time with you and make memories that I would have years after you leave.

Stupidly, I allowed myself to really fall for you. Heart and mind.

So here I am. Opening at the coffeeshop after a night filled to the brim with tears and goodbye letters and hope that in some alternative universe you have feelings for me too and it would somehow all work out.

At least five thousand unlikely scenarios race through my mind as I think of the day I say goodbye to you and hand you the letter.

The one I luckily wrote on my phone first rather than paper, otherwise my tears would have made it unreadable.

I think of the best possible scenarios and those still don't seem to be good enough to will you to stay, or me decide to abandon any previous reservations from our differences in values.

It's crazy though, because I have seen it. I've seen the alternative universe. The one where our values collide. The one where you're passionate, but not about the same things.

There was this hope in your voice. This hope that something greater could and would answer your prayers.

I saw the fire around your heart as you prayed. It was new and fragile but as you prayed it grew. It grew and took over your whole body in some amazing fashion that was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I saw you sitting in front of us all, asking God to be there with us. Asking God things I'm sure you've never asked him before.

Then I could see how your heart, paired with Christ's, was going to change the world like nothing anybody could have ever imagined.

Somewhere I read that it's okay to love someone who doesn't love you back, as long as they are worthy of it. As long as they deserve it.

You do.

I've got to be honest, I don't think we could find anyone who doesn't love you.

That's what makes it so hard. You make it really really...REALLY difficult to not love you.

I feel like you would have to try with such vigor to get me to not love you.

I know that it's different this time. I don't see you on this pedestal. I haven't lifted you up to something that you're not. I haven't fallen in love with the idea of you.

I can see flaws and some little things that I'm sure down the road would annoy me to no end. But I overlook them, because in all reality they don't matter. Because it's you.

Things that used to be a big deal for me have seemed to be just tiny differences in our thinking.

Somewhere along the way, in between me liking you and me trying not to like you and then me throwing caution to the wind and becoming fully head over chucks for you, I saw you. I saw your heart. I saw your dreams and passions and family.

I saw all these things that sometimes it hurts to know that I'll be forced to live without them. I'll be forced to say goodbye.

And like I said, the person I'm really mad at is myself. I'm the one to blame.

You took no part in it. You were just there, being yourself. And I was here becoming myself around you.

You sir, were a force of nature, and you came into my life and everything was drastically changed.

So yes I'm upset at myself. But I know that down the road I will never regret it. Any of it.

Getting to know you while secretly harboring feelings for you. Allowing you to be the catalyst that threw me into being myself. Trusting you with tough things, and you in turn completely blowing my mind by how trustworthy you really were.

I don't now, and will never regret these last six months. It was a whirlwind. It was something that swept me off my feet and made me believe that guys like you actually exist.

So I'm mad. But I am so much more thankful that I ended up here, and ended up meeting one of the most amazing men I have ever met.

Even if it had to end in goodbye, the hello and the in between were the most wonderful things I could have ever asked for.

Love Changes Hearts

This morning I had the opportunity to join some new friends for coffee. I had a great, slow morning and then we showed up to the coffee shop and it was like my mood immediately dropped.

I have no idea if it was the people, or just me, but seconds after walking in I just felt off.

For the past couple of weeks there was a person that I kept encountering that I struggled with a lot. They got on my nerves and they always just seemed like too much for me to handle.

Because of this and a couple of specific experiences, I kind of wrote them off. I wasn't trying to be mean, it was just how it happened.

Something in me just couldn't find it in my heart to connect. Realizing now it had nothing to do with her, but more about me and my heart.

Today at the coffeeshop, she expressed frustrations and struggles that she was having in her life and asked if we could pray for her.

I decided that I would try to pray first, and for some reason in the middle of my prayer, I felt my heart shift and I felt my mood improve.

As I was praying I realized that this woman was completely and totally loved by God. I prayed that God would bless her, fully hoping and believing that he would.

It was like as I stepped out to love on and pray for her, God was changing my heart towards her and reminding me that he loves His children, and He loves His children to love His children.

As I made the decision to love her, my heart changed.

Love is Work

Recently I've had one thing become so real to me, it's like I was slapped in the face with it. I think sometimes we grow up thinking that love is this magical thing that is just perfect and painless and completely free of complication.

But now I think I finally understand that it's not.

It's not easy. There's not some model you can follow either.

Last week I watched this random country movie on Netflix. This women's husband was arrested and had lied to her and she had gotten so fed up she basically turned her back on him. She ends up running into an old guy friend in her hometown and he's there to comfort her, but you can tell that there's more to it. By the end of the movie you think that she's going to divorce her husband and then most likely end up with this other guy. Then out of nowhere the movie completely turns around and she's decided to take the risk and trust her husband again, and to truly fight for their marriage, and their love.

I cannot tell you how bad I was crying at the end of that movie.

I was just so astounded. These days we see people leaving their significant others for other people, divorcing their spouses because it was too hard. But this movie, this movie was the truth to what love should be.

It was like all of my confusion about love and marriage was cleared up in an hour and a half country hallmark type movie.

Loving someone is work.

Loving someone hurts.

Loving someone is challenging.

Sometimes it's even hard to love someone that you love.

Now, I have never been in a relationship. I have never even been in a flirtationship. But I know, now more than ever, that loving another human being is probably going to be the hardest thing I've ever done.

It's going to be hard to not take things personally.

It's going to be difficult, being brutally honest when they ask for it.

It's going to be a challenge for me to express how I feeling to this other person who holds my heart, and can do whatever they wish with it.

It'll be tough to be one half of a whole.

But I can't wait.

I can't wait to fully devote myself to someone else.

I can't wait to bicker, and have that one person who basically said yes to hearing you vent until the end of time.

I can't wait to finally be with the person I waited all this time for.

The person I cried over so many nights, praying and asking God why he wasn't here yet.

I read this quote today:

"Do not settle, please do not settle because there is someone out there who refuses to settle, and you are worth so much more than convenience and ease, you are worth a heart that fights for you."

- T.B. LaBerge // Do Not Settle

I see all of these things popping out at me telling me love is hard, it's tough, it's work. Love is fighting for the other person.

I won't choose convenience over real love.

Love is work.

Sometimes you want them to know, but you don't want to have to say anything.

For a good portion of my life, I have been plagued with shame. I have been overridden with guilt and regret for past decisions and situations that I did not volunteer for.

Sometimes I find myself caught up in it all. It doesn't matter where I am, I can stare off into space and wish that things had been different for me.

Everyone has a tough life, I'm convinced. It doesn't matter who you are, we were made to endure certain struggles and to be made stronger through those struggles.

I have a not so clean past. A past that seems as though it could only be written about in a cruel novel where the main character is always playing the victim.

Today I found myself having a certain discussion with a co-worker about being able to know things about people just based on observations and the way that they act and react to things.

I was interested to hear what he had to say about me, so after about twenty minutes of me begging him and reassuring him that it wouldn't be awkward, he caved.

He started off with a certain situation, basically describing how the guys at the establishment I work at always go to the window to stare at "hot" girls as they walk past, or make me switch them when a hot girl comes to the window. Then he said the word self-conscious.

I know this about myself. It's no big deal.

After I basically pulled it out of him, he said that he would say some key words. So he began. Acceptance. Self-conscious, mentioning the window scenario again, lack of confidence, based on looks, comparing myself to those girls, having a willingness to do whatever to be accepted. All of this was spot on, and yes somewhat general for girls these days anyway. But then he said "and you get upset when the guys make rape jokes, and you don't like to be touched, so there's probably something there.."

My heart sank. How is it, that this person who has known me for three months could know all of this information just by being observant?

Whenever I took a mini-vacation from awareness and decided to let my thoughts travel back to my past I had always wished that someone would see it in my eyes. That someone could just figure it out without me having to spell it out, or awkwardly bring it up. I wanted someone to know and comfort me and tell me that there was no shame.

I wanted them to know, but I didn't want to have to say anything.

This moment for me was exciting. Believe it or not. Someone knew. Someone knew and they didn't treat me differently.

I think this conversation made me realize that I am seen. That someone noticed. That I was worth noticing.

Sometimes you want them to know, but you don't want to have to say anything.

The Head and The Heart

She had been dwelling on what had happened. 

She was so excited and she felt so special, but I told her that it wasn't a good idea.

She would run crazy if I didn't pull her back to reality. She's always so hung up on the ideas and on just going for it, but what about being practical? That's my responsibility in her life. I try my best to make her think about what she's doing. To weigh the pros and cons, or to even just analyze something first.

I'll admit it, I get a little carried away sometimes though. Sometimes I force her to see all the negative things that could happen. It's like I need to make sure she knows what could happen. Even if it means overkill on analyzing the facts and not the underlying feelings. 

She pleads with me a lot to let up. She just wants to run free and have people follow her, but I can't allow for that. It's reckless and in all honesty, it's going to end up in her being broken. So I'm here to protect her from that. 

Here she is again, hung up on something that should have only been one night. One night that would end up as just memories. 

She's convinced that it should mean more than just memories. She's convinced that the actions and the things that were said meant more than just kindness or him being a gentleman. She was convinced, or at least she hoped that it was supposed to be more.

This has to be the thousandth time she has done this. She puts herself out there and then gets broken, and I have to pick up the pieces and use my knowledge of her to put them back together. It's been a good while since I've let her really go for it. Usually I shut it down right away in hopes that she will get over him quick. I sometimes have to plant a deceptive seed in her to overanalyze her worthiness. 

It's not that she isn't worthy, trust me, I know she is. 

But on the off chance that he doesn't feel the same as she does, I give her the thoughts and the mindset that he won't ever. 

I make her think that what she's doing is awkward, or bothersome, or a burden. Sometimes this causes her insecurities to come out. When her insecurities come out, she becomes anxious. And when she becomes anxious she is restless, and then in turn she sometimes get impulsive. When she's impulsive, things end quickly. 

It's a somewhat tough process, having to see her put herself out there, or try. I hate being the bearer of bad news, or the one who brings rain on her parade, but I'm the logical one. I will keep her safe from harm. If she would only let me. 

So I'm waiting. It's been a while since I let her go. I haven't seen her truly go for it and win in at least three years, but even then it had started too soon and ended quickly. 

I'm torn. I'm wearing down because, believe it or not it does get exhausting having to bring people down to logic when they are sitting so high on cloud nine. 

Maybe just this once I can let her lead her own life. Maybe just this once I'll let Heart lead. She's waited a long time for this.

But if this time doesn't work. If for some reason it's not what she originally hoped, she will be crushed. 

And I'll be there, to set up a new set of walls to hold her together again. 

How is it that I'm still cautious?

A few years back I was hurt pretty badly by a couple of my best friends. 

I was lied to, and my heart got broken.

I don't think they understood the deepness of the wounds or the severity. 

I forgave blindly because I knew it was what I was "supposed" to do. 

That and I'm sure I didn't want to cut them out of my life, I love them. 

However, since then I have been overly cautious. 

I don't trust as easily. And I definitely don't put myself out there like I once did. 

If I ever have a crush on someone and I find out they like one of my friends, I back off and let it go.

If I like someone and someone else shows interest in them, even if I barely know them, I'll back off and let them go for it.

You see, I'm not willing to be hurt again. I don't take many risks, I can't go for it. 

I'm hesitant, and stuck and yet still incredibly hopeful that something will happen even though I haven't given any indication that I want it to.

I'm too cautious. 

No risk no reward right? 

Isn't that what we're taught? 

Here I am scared to death that I'll be broken again. 

When I forgave the last time, I didn't give it enough time. I jumped right back into the friendship, still very wounded, and holding back the bitterness in my heart that was trying to escape in any situation. 

I wasn't okay with it. 

I wasn't okay with feeling betrayed. 

What if I put myself out there like that all the time? 

Wouldn't I be completely in pieces all of the time? 

Even now, I find myself holding back from even having a crush on someone because they remind me of the one person that I had to get over. The one person who was an accomplice in the breaking of my high school heart. 

How is it that I'm still cautious? 

Can my heart ever be completely healed from that? 

Can I ever take the risk again?