i want the color.

i want to fall in love.

i've probably had to much time to think lately and that's probably where this is all coming from.

i want the love that's crazy. that doesn't make any sense and at the same time is so obvious, we won't know why we didn't see it before. i don't think i've met him. but i am starting to get a picture of who he may be. this is because i am learning more and more what i need.

i had a dream last night that i honestly haven't stopped thinking about all day. i don't remember many of the details because i was finishing it as i woke up. all i really do remember is how wonderful he was. and i was absolutely happy. a happy that i have never been. the relationship this guy and i had felt equal which is something i may not have ever truly had. i didn't judge my every action on whether or not he'd leave me. i KNEW he wanted me, all of me. i felt secure.

i'm looking for him. i'm looking for the way i felt with him. i'm looking for someone who wants me the way this guy wanted me. i think my subconscious was remembering regina spektor's fidelity at one point in my dream because i remember saying something about never wanting the color to leave.

maybe it is selfish, but maybe it isn't. in the past i've settled. this isn't to say that the guys i've dated have been beneath me or anything, they just were not for me. the color was never there.

from now on, i'm looking for the color. if its not there, i'm out. i want someone who loves me all the time and who i love all the time. you may call me unreasonable and tell me that this isn't possible and that's fine. you may have your opinion. i know he's out there.

i'm gonna find the guy from my dream, until then, who knows. i guess i'll just wait for the color.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigqKfLWjvM

would you change anything?

an interesting question was posed the other day in church...if you had the opportunity to go back and change one thing in your life, would you? i know my pastor didn't mean that to be the focal point of his sermon, but for me it was. he said that there was a name for those of us who didn't raise our hands...liars. i really don't know if he's right. i mean, think about it, if you change even just one thing, everything that follows changes as well.

for example, something small to begin with, if instead of going to a movie, you stay home and play games with your family. either option is just fine, but if you stayed home, you would miss inside jokes with your friends, but gain them with your family. not that one should be higher than the other, but interactions after that look different.

something bigger as an example, what if everything would have worked out as "planned"? what if you were married right now? what would you have gained? what would your life look like? what would you have missed out on? would you really want anything different?

my answer is no.

the more things happen, the more i am affirmed that everything has a purpose, even when we screw up. we learn things. we learn what we want and what we deserve. we're a stubborn people and often pain is the best and cruelest teacher. look back however, and you'll see that hindsight is 20/20. if you can't see the purpose, you aren't far enough out of the event.

i know this all sounds weirdly optimistic, and the fact is, it may all be the holidays. i'm not feeling horribly happy at the moment, but i still have this strange feeling that everything will be alright.

i graduate in may. bollocks. i want so badly to go straigt to grad school, however, i'm flat broke. i am beginning to entertain the possibility of working for a few years and then going back to school. that opens a whole new box of issues, but i think i'll be alright. my last plan didn't work out and as broken and hurt as i was from the dissolution, i honestly don't want that plan anymore.

i'll be alright, whatever happens. and i wouldn't change a thing.

c.s. lewis scares me a bit.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it in tact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."

C.S. Lewis

The Four Loves

yep, i'm crazy too.

i ran across a comic lately that i throughly enjoyed. a man was speaking, whom, based on the context, was a psychologist. the caption read this, 'i don't know about the rest of you all, but i got into the field of psychology because i, myself, am insane.' i literally laughed outloud. its so true though. the more i've thought about it, the more i've come to realize we're all crazy. some of us are a little more touched than others, but we're all at least a little screwed up. i wouldn't have it any other way though. our oddities make life interesting. they make it painful and hard, but they also make it wonderful and full.

why is it that we get so excited when we find out someone else has the same strange habit of putting hot cocoa mix on ice cream as we do? because we're weird. if we knew this habit was normal, we wouldn't be as pumped about the connection.

why would we voluntarily get hurt by the same person multiple times and still go back? because we're weird. we know that we're gonna get hurt, but we also know that this time, it could be wonderful. why might this time be different? because there's two weirdies involved.

i talked recently with a good friend of mine (in a storage closet of all places) about how messed up i am. i tend to put things i don't want to deal with in boxes and never open them. i'm building walls with these boxes and i'm realizing now that to ever move forward i have to get rid of these boxes and the only way to get rid of them is to go through them. i'm not overly excited about the idea of this, but oh well. the problem i have is i recognized that coping strategies i use aren't always healty and i can give great advice to others with the same problems i have, but i can't fix me. i know that how i deal with things works for me, for now, but eventually somethings gonna break. i also realize that now i'm just rambling and should probably stop because its gonna stop making sense very soon.

i guess what i'm trying to say is, we're all crazy. thank heavens, because otherwise life would be irritatingly dull.

timing.

i had an interesting conversation tonight with a close friend and in the midst of it i stated the phrase below. now i don't think i'm a genius by any means, but i am quite proud of this one so i thought i'd share.


the right person at the wrong time will be the wrong person until the right time.

creatures of habit.

second semester just started and one of the classes i'm in is a pscyhology of intimate relationships course. its any kind of relationship, whether that be friendship, romantic, etc. one of the things we discussed today was why people stay in harmful relationships. it really got me to thinking. in my experience, we tend to stick with what we know. i believe that that is one of the main reasons for staying in bad relationships. i also believe that most relationships do not start out poorly, but instead evolve into the unhealty relationship. another reason for staying may come out of this idea. because the relationship wasn't always unhealthy there is always the slight possibility that it could change back. learned helplessness also plays a huge part in this whole thing.

there was a study done in which the researchers placed dogs into cages. the floors of these cages shocked the dogs. half of the dogs had floors that were divided and if they jumped over the divider the floor on the other side did not shock them. the other half of the dogs did not have this. the second part of the study involved the dogs being in a cage with a shocking floor again, however, this time the cage door was open. what the researchers found was that the dogs who had the option to jump before ran out of the cage when the floor began to develop shocks. the dogs without the previous option did not leave the cage. they simply stood there and took it. they never experienced a floor that didn't shock them so why would the outside floor be any different that what they were currently standing on.

this idea presents itself in unhealty relationships frequently. when someone does not know any different they are less likely to change. one thing to note, when someone is in an unhealthy relationship, they are far more likely to get out of it if they see that there is other options or possibilities. for example, if a woman is in an abusive relationship, whether verbal or physical, if a man other than the one she is currently tied to, shows her attention in a positive light, such as compliments or simply respecting her space, she will recognize this as different and better and thus be more likely to get out of the unhealthy relationship she is currently in.

i am a firm believer that change happens only when we are uncomfortable. i'll be the first to say that i'm not the biggest fan of change, but i also know that change usually involves growth and i do know that growth is vital. pertaining to unhealthy relationships, sometimes a person has been in the unhealthy relationship so long that the idea of being alone again is more scary than what they are currently dealing with.

do i have all the answers? nope. in fact, i'm pretty sure i may have just created more questions, but i think that the more questions that come up the better chance we have of finding answers. we like what is familiar, but maybe being creatures of habit is what's hurting us most.