Modern Love Equating to Modern Loneliness

I want to be able to put into words. The thoughts and feelings that are rushing through my head right now. That are dominating my heart and my actions like a puppet master. I want to have an answer, a remedy, a magical potion that I can drink that will clear my mind and allow me to focus. 

Unfortunately for me, magic doesn’t exist. At least not the witches, broom sticks, and potions kind of type. 

What am I to do? How am I supposed to process something that I can’t even really name. Or more truthfully I don’t want to really name—especially on paper because once I’ve made it real, tangible. Once it’s legible, etched onto a page, there is no taking it back. Seeing the words in black and white ink are almost virial. They infect me, my mind, their blood seeps into mine—we are one. There is no escaping this train of thought.

Well I guess I’ll just stop trying to avoid it and I’ll say it even though I know it’s going to upset me and I hate the fact that it upsets me.

This whole rendezvous and back and forth that I’ve been having with H is really starting to get to me. I mean when I met him. I was like eh, he’s okay. I like him, I’d continue to get to know him—but nothing about him really particularly impressed me. He seemed a little bit like an enigma to me which I did find intriguing but there wasn’t this initial attraction that I had to him like I had with other boys.    

However, he was sly—or at least I perceived that he was. And then he told me that he didn’t really want to date and that he had a lot of stuff going on in his life with applying to jobs and such and he just didn’t know if he could handle a girl in his life. Honestly, I was relieved. Glad he brought it up so I didn’t have to. 

But then things changed. One day he simply called me out of the blue and we had this super long conversation and then that just kind of continued. Then he just invited himself over to my apartment to watch a movie. The conversations we had lasted hours late into the night. They were conversations that covered and array of topics and I began to feel very comfortable with him. He made me laugh and smile and I was just generally happy around him. I mean there would be times that we were on the phone together and he would be doing other tasks and I was just like there. Sometimes I was talking, other times I wasn’t. I remembered thinking why is he on the phone with me right now? What purpose am I serving to him by just existing on the phone with him for four plus hours. 

We were definitely flirtatious—that much anyone could have seen from a mile away. He also indicated that maybe we were going out on dates by saying that he felt bad for not paying for my food and honestly I was just really confused about the whole thing. But my mindset had completely altered. I for sure liked him now and I was pretty confident that he liked me too but that he just had too much life stuff going on in the moment to do anything about it. 

All of that changed after he came over to watch the movie Us at my apartment. We had a really great time. The entire thing felt like a date. We were touching there was no space between us. It was definitely the signs of two people who liked each other. But he didn’t do anything about it. He didn’t try and hold my hand, or kiss me or anything. And honestly I found that very upsetting. I’m not super used to getting rejected sexually—if anything I have to reject boys sexually because they constantly want sex or sexy things from me. I chopped it off to just nerves but something seemed a little weird about the whole thing too. It’s like he was so comfortable around me and talking to me and then right when the scales could tip he not only got cold feet but like he switched into a different person. It was like I repulsed him or scared him on some level and all he could think about was leaving and treating me like a business partner and that would hurt anyone male or female. 

So confident on my one can of rose cider I brought it up and honestly I felt like Q was breaking up with me all over again—which is one of the worst feelings I’ve ever felt. All I want is for someone to want me. To care about me. Isn’t that what we all want, what we are all searching for? And I don’t know why I feel so alone in this world right now? Why I feel like I need someone that I can trust on this deeper level, but I do. I can feel myself going into this shell, running away from the people that I know and that care about me because there is something missing and I’m trying to find that something. H, filled that void, at least at times. 

And the fear of that void coming back. Of having to be my own savior, my own confidont, my own best friend, having to love myself so much so I don’t hate myself so I don’t want to try and kill myself is honeslty a little terrifying. I just question why I have to feel so alone? When will someone come along and want to help me? Want to carry this burden with me? Want to get to know all of me, love me for it, despite of it? Is anyone willing to even try because the answer seems continually like seems like no. 

I don’t know what message I’m being sent or what I’m supposed to learn from this. I don’t know what God is trying to teach me. It makes me want to close myself off to hope and to love a lot of the time. Perhaps that is part of the lesson, to learn that you cannot do that. To learn to be myself despite all the rejection from people who don’t truly want to be in my life and still be vulnerable despite all the pain that causes me. 

I’m a feeler. I’ve always been a feeler. Sometimes, I think that I feel things too deeply. I feel the pain, misery, and brokenness of this world on a level that is hard for me to articulate and that I believe is hard for most people to understand. A lot of people think that I’m overreacting or that I’m depressed, which is something that I do struggle with, or that I should just learn to suck it up and deal with it. To suppress my emotions, leave them all inside me. Allow them to curdle and eat away at my soul. When people are asking me to do that, they are really asking me to kill myself, very slowly. I’m being bound in chains and like Christ I feel like I’m being whipped and burdened with a cross. Is this supposed to be my destiny? To understand the suffering of Christ therefore I can appreciate His gifts so much more. Because throughout all this darkness, and brokenness Christ’s light shine’s all the brighter to me. The story of redemption becomes all the sweeter. To think that God, my God, went through this amount of suffering and pain to save a sinner like me is unfathomable—it truly is the greatest love story I know.

I could continue talking about that for what I feel like is hours, days, weeks honestly. But since I’m such a deep feeler. A person in constant grieving who holds so much pain within her. I fear pain and loss. It rips me to my core. Which many people view as a weakness. But I am already so broken, so bruised, so dependant on God that sometimes I think if I suffer another blow it will kill me. I really do wonder how much one person can take. I have truly wondered if my life is worth living. If I have to deal with so much, if I hurt so much, wouldn’t I be better off dead? At least I’d be in Heaven with the Lord, for eternity worshiping Him. It really does sound appetizing. It would be an end to all of my fears all of my past, present, and future pain. Is it giving up, yes, but sometimes I want to give up, I'm tired of fighting—I don’t know how much more my small body and spirit can handle. Still, I know this is not what the Lord wants from me and that He is the one providing me with strength to continue on despite my broken sprit because I have His Holy Spirit within me,

Thinking that I’ve found a confidant in H, that I found someone who generally seemed to care and care deeply about me. But maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see. The talk we had two nights ago about what we were ripped me to the core. My fears of losing someone that I care about who might care about me came bubbling to the surface and for what reason. 

Because I’m not sure if I see this going anywhere. I don’t know how I feel.

I’ve been going back and forth processing this wealth of information and insight. If we can just take a second to analyze the situation. You’ve only really known me for a month and we’ve not been physically romantic nor has there been any real effort to be fully emotionally romantically involved at all so how can you know if something is going anywhere if you haven’t even tried it at all. You have to put in effort, you have to try to see if something goes somewhere if it doesn’t then okay. But you cannot throw in the towel before giving something the ‘good ole college try’ as they say. Also you cannot read the future so there is that, how are you to know that your feelings won’t change about me in a weeks time in a months time? It takes time for true feelings to develop. When I first met you, I didn’t like you but I didn’t write you off because I was able to see the potential for growth. That is huge. Are you so unwilling to risk yourself and try to foster a relationship that you willing to throw something away that might be amazing because you don’t know exactly how you are feeling? That is the whole part of dating is to figure out what you don’t know. To figure out how you truly feel about a person? You’re not supposed to be obsessed with or in love with them from the beginning—that’s a little strange, but our culture makes that seem that is how it is supposed to go.

Are you kind of interested in this person, date them find out more about them, see if you really like them—then you can have a relationship with them. Don’t start with a relationship. Figure things out together as a team that’s how this goes. I don’t know when, where or how people forgot all of this but they have and it really upsets me because I wish we could all just be people and not hide behind insecurities, lies, screens, excuses, social media and so much more. I wish we all had the confidence to risk getting hurt rather than staying safely wrapped up in our homes. 

Here’s my other issue. Let’s be friends. I’m not saying that we can’t be friends ever. But you hurt me. We didn’t start off as friends, we never had a normal friendship. We started off as potential romantic interests and it’s hard to reverse those feelings into being strictly platonic. I view relationships in a certain way, I feel most would agree that there are levels of relationships the most intimate being that of your romantic partner. If I believe that you fit this intimate mold, I will begin to give you access to information and sides of me that only that sole person has access to. That is a privilege not a right. I let you into my life, into my secrets, into my hurt, my joy. I let you know what makes me. That is not information that is freely found. It is earned, given in small doses to trusted parties. Once you’ve shown that you’ve taken advantage of this or that you no longer wish to fulfill your role as intimate partner you can no longer have this same free access. All it causes is more problems and pain in the future. Or if I will be your friend, you have restricted access into my life, you don’t get to be my confidant a person that I trust deeply, because I know that you broke it once so how can I trust that you won’t break it again. Then everyone is upset and the whole thing is in shambles. So, no you don’t get to be my friend and it sad and I mourn this loss. I mourn this potential. I mourn you. 

So where am I now. I’m hurt and trying not to cry in the library at Belmont. Which is pathetic because I should not let a boy affect me to this degree. Although the issues are much deeper than a boy. Still this is a loss, and it hurts, it sucks, it is a loss, a mourning process. The other kicker is being a feeler—I hold onto hope. Which can be a great quality and a self-destructive one at the same time. I hold on to the fact that you don’t know what you want and that I believe my heart. I believe that you like me and I believe that you’ll miss me and want to change your mind and come back to me. But then I remembered the definition of hope and try not to have it. Hope is desire mixed with exception. So this is my desire for you and my expectation of what will happen of how you’ll respond. But I don’t know your mind your heart, your hope. So I’m left in the dark. Like a child learning to walk, continually falling down. Motherless and lost, hitting my head on hardwood—forgetting—crying out in pain. 

I try to sandwich my feelings to swallow them whole inside me. Let the acids in my stomach eat them away, but the opposite happens. My emotions eat me from the inside out, hollowing me into a vat of nothingness, emptiness. A cup of water that needs to be filled, a plant that is wilting, that needs to be brought back to life. Breathing hurts, as with each breath there is a small stab to my heart. I’ll hear a song, see a bird, hear a distant laugh and it all reminds me of you. Each is rips a small piece of my heart out from my body. I have to pinch myself to keep from screaming, holding my breath to keep from crying. 

Focus. On anything besides you, besides the turmoil and tornado inside of my mind and body. I work until the soles of my feet are gritty, dirty, red, and sore. I crouch on the floor and wipe away the dust taking satisfaction in the crisp white clean floors and corners. I throw myself into polite conversation with strangers hoping, begging for some kind of connection, to feel alive, to feel seen and noticed. 

Again, seems silly that all of this is over a boy doesn’t it. Shouldn’t I be more empowered than this? Able to stand on my own two feet. Be my own prince. But I feel that it’s more complex than that. Part of me cannot help but continue to turn to Jennette Winterson and really wonder, why is the measure of love loss? 

At times, all I feel is loss. All I want in return is love, to medicate that loss. However, if all I am is loss than at the same time doesn’t that mean that all I am is also love? Which is something that I firmly believe about myself. I am love. I live to be love, to give love—to be Christ like in my love? To act as a mirror as a vessel in my love for Christ and for His people. The Bible says that this is a lonely path. That the world will hate you for being this way. For being of true Biblical love. And what I think is an oxymoron and what makes it so complex is that the world preaches love. Love yourself, love others, don’t hate, love love love—but I feel that the world is more selfish now than it has ever been. The love we share is selfish love. It’s love that is meant for us and if someone doesn’t share that love then we dispose of them, we inhilate them. We no longer have sacrificial love, unconditional love our love comes with a list of demands and conditions. You hurt me and I’ll hurt you—and I’ll also leave you. We are afraid of real love, of commitment. But don’t we lose so much this way? 

I don’t want to lose love. No matter what form of love that it is. But I also know that I have to protect my heart. So H, what is your next step? I don’t want to lose this. I don’t want this to end, but at the same time, I don’t know what is safe. If you are safe for me. Are you willing to take a risk and open up for real? Or do you come with a set of demands and conditions? Can’t we just lay our differences and fears aside at the threshold hold hands and face them together. Can’t we face uncertainty—be willing to fall and maybe be bruised but also experience something beautiful alongside the journey. Be willing to learn and grow with one another. I suppose I am, but the question is are you? And I fear that you are not.