Make Believe

How am I going to be an optimist about this...

At the core of everyone, I believe there is something good. Who is it that theorized that we are inherently good? I'm with that guy. 

There is something in me that see's the potential good in everyone and takes off running with it. Everything good in someone, to me, is who they are. I take those building blocks, however many or few there may be, of admirable traits in a person and build a castle with them; a fortress that, unfortunately, is almost impenetrable to anything I might disagree with about that person. In fact, disagreeable traits somehow get lost entirely in the construction of my castles; swept aside under the brush and rarely paid enough attention to make a difference in my opinion about them. 

I've learned that this works against me.

This ability that I've developed to completely disregard unfavorable traits about people has smothered my ability to weigh someone's personality in a balanced way. It's turned my ability to forgive into such a trampled footpath that it's more like a 6 lane freeway, now. Nobody can do wrong, and if you do, give me a few months and I'll forget it entirely. I'll be back at ground zero building you a castle again. I can not hold a grudge. 

This year has seen the first time that I've ever written someone off entirely as a friend and it took a lot for me to get there... a whole year, in fact. A whole year of hoping for the best in this person. A whole year of believing that their friendship would outweigh anything deceitful, untrue and harsh they harbored in their heart. A whole year of forgiving and forgetting; of being walked on, lied to, betrayed, and manipulated. A whole year of giving my friendship unconditionally only to have it returned battered and unable breathe. 

It takes a lot for a castle to crumble;

to demolish something that I've built.

It takes a lot for the walls of my pride to collapse;

to admit that believing in something doesn't make it that way;

that my foundation was faulty 

and the bricks in this castle were made of dreams. 

It takes a lot for me to lose hope in someone.

Sometimes the castles begin to fall into disarray when someone negates the personality I've dreamt up for them and im met by disappointment. But its always repairable. There is always a trait that overcomes my disappoint. Or I will find one. Or i'll find an excuse. Or I forgive. For this reason, it takes more than a wrecking ball to bring my towers crumbling.

I forgive the unforgiveable.

I overlook the unsightly.

I defend offenses with excuse.

And unfortunately, and I use that word with certainty after much deliberation, this is because I hold such high standards for everyone. People are not made of their faults. They are inherently good and along the beaten path of life that's what will bring the conscience to the surface...even in the most reckless people. 

But expectation, I've learned and learned the hard way, is the root of all heartache.

I've met disappointment with hope too many times.

Reality sometimes is a hard friend to have. He tells you everything you need to hear. Or possibly everything you already knew, but refused to say out loud. 

Despite the armor that hope bears and the sword that forgiveness yields, reality works it's way from the inside. Sometimes he is the traitor that brings my castles to their rightful place: to rubble. And hope stands wounded, and forgiveness blinded, and reality just shrugging. 

I told you so, he says.

This castle was built on dreams.

The Book of Love is Long and Boring

I had a strange revelation recently: What happens when the search is over?
Yeah, I'm about to write about relationships.

I feel like it's pretty normal for soul mate searching to be a part of everyone's life.
Love. It's that thing that's all around. Music, movies, books. It's everywhere.
Some people say they don't want it, and get it anyway. Some say they aren't looking, but it still finds them. Some take it in one night stands. Some take love serially; occasionally; one at a time; two at a time.

 And then there's people like me. I'm one of those people who searches for it. Avidly.

I used to believe in fairy tales and princes and being treated like a princess. I believed in being swept away and relationships being perfect. I believed in that deep, blinding, fire wielding, crazy, unstoppable love. And then I read the Love Languages book. It took all my passionate theories about love right out from underneath me. I remember reading the preface of that book and throwing it across the room because I refused to believe what it was saying: Lasting love is not a raging fire. It's not sparkles and googly eyes and rainbows all the time. It wasn't Cinderella where everyone lived happily ever after. In fact, that passion fades and turns into something deeper, more real...blah blah blah. At the time that sounded incredibly boring to me (which with age and experience I have a totally different understanding and respect for). But at the time, it was stupid. I refused to believe that the excitement you felt in the beginning of a relationship faded. If love was real, that never faded, so people must not really be in love. I was determined to find the love I had whirled up in my head.

and then, unsurprisingly, i did. (or i thought i did)
I fell crazy, head over heels, unbelievably in love with my best friend (that I had only known for less than a year). For my first relationship it was fantastic. I couldn't get enough of the guy. He was my other half; he was the peanutbutter to my applebutter. If I had ever dreamed up a 'perfect' guy in my head at the age of 21, he was it. We clicked and it was awesome. He helped me be a better me; he was encouraging, realistic and patient.  I loved that love. And I loved that guy. I had never felt anything like it before.
But things didn't go how I had planned them out in my head, because obviously that's not how love works. The relationship ended and my world crashed and burned and everything turned to ash. The next year was such a dark time for me.

For a long time I didn't want anything else. Stubbornness set in again and I refused to believe that that was really the end. It was real, true love and he would find his way back to me. As time went on and he dated other people I realized that he wasn't coming back. I became angry that the one person I had loved stronger than anyone else (besides my family) was swept out from under my feet and dragged out into the sea of life without me. That's what I believed: that he was taken from me. And over the next few years that belief turned into anger which, filtered through other relationships, turned to bitterness.

For a couple of years I lived on the whisper of that love. I didn't want anything that wasn't that. I went on living life believing that all love would be like that and if it wasn't then I didn't want it.

Then I got into another relationship and it, too, was a firey one. This one was a different fire. It was destructive and wild. Like fireworks exploding before they actually take off from the ground. It was an angry, passionate, crazy love...but the wrong kind of crazy. It was the years in this relationship that I started to hate love. I started to believe that love wasn't real. There was no such thing as true love and anyone who said or did otherwise was faking it. Love never lasted and marriages fell apart. Nobody actually liked being married or having a family. Everyone was miserable. Everyone cheated. Everyone lied. Everyone fell out of love. That fluffy stuff that happened in the beginning was like cotton candy...it dissolved and it dissolved fast.

My third, most recent and also last, relationship really solidified my pessimistic theories. He fulfilled my self fulfilling prophetic belief that love doesn't really exist because I let him. I chased him even after he broke things off with me. And he let me. And I let him let me. I didn't stop myself. I learned to really hate love because I refused to stop chasing an illusion. Good job, Lindsay.

Occasionally I've seen happy relationships. I've seen people who were lucky in love. But I started fostering the belief that it's pretty rare. After all, I had my first love and nothing has compared since. It started to make sense in my head that it wasn't a common thing. Perhaps that's why I settle for horrible relationships; the fear that real love may only exist once. So for now, I'm still hanging out under that rain cloud.

All of this brings me to where I really wanted to say something: Online dating.

Someone at my work had told me that the percentage of people we meet after college as potential life mates drops dramatically. In fact, it's almost non-existent.

I started to think about this. It was true... I worked in a preschool with all women. Where was I going to meet a man? Well, I met one through family friends, it was that explosive relationship I was in for two years. But we were a scattered rain shower. During the many times that we excommunicated each other I turned to online dating. Unfortunately, once I opened that portal in my life finding love became my vendetta. And let me tell you, its like the Facebook of love. It's just as entertaining and, dare I say, addictive and likewise as frustrating.

It made a monster out of me. A love-search monster. I feel like since I fell in love the first time 5 years ago with that oh-so-perfect-for-me boy that I have been on a relentless search to find it again.

Now...in regards to that inquisition?...
What happens when it ends?
...If it ends.

5 years really isn't so long, but I never had relationships in high school. I just kind of watched everyone else. Right now I feel like I'm watching everyone else get married and fall in love, just like I always have.

But really this is a funny place to be in: to bounce from one dating relationship to another. To sometimes be getting to know 2 or 3 or even 4 people at the same time all with the vague intent of making our way to a relationship. I've been on dates with 3 different people in one week. I've started and ended so many conversations in one day that I feel like my life sometimes is just a series of speed dates.

But what will I be like if I ever meet that ONE person who fits the bill? The one who brings a sense of real love back into my life? What will life to be like to only keep track of one person's life story; one phone number; to date only one person and not confuse them with someone else? And what if I get married? What will it be like to know I have one person to share the rest of my life with; to know that I've found what I've been looking for.

What will life be like when I don't have to search for love anymore?

Welcome to Normalcy

Warning: you are about to read an extraordinarily normal blog.

Proceed with moderate expectation.

If you happen to have the expectations of finding something unique, exhilarating  enlightening or fantastic, turn back now. The reading journey you are about to embark on will have no spark, flare, or special degree of interestingness other than my own personality...which is, unfortunately for you, very normal. 

In fact, there is a chance that these posts will be so normal that perhaps this will all fade into the background of the internet oblivion and be nothing more than a series of ramblings to humor myself. 

If, however, you would like to read something in which you might find relateable to your own normalcy, I invite you to proceed expectationless into the infrequent babblings about my own unimportant, mostly mundane and very average life.

So with that short and to the point disclaimer, I welcome you to:

The Extraordinarily Normal Life of Me.