A thought on Love...

I know I've mostly been posting about music...as it is my music blog...but I thought I would start posting about other things!

This is something I was going to post about around Valentine's Day but since I did not, I figure now is as good as any time.

****

If any theme is completely universal it is the desire of the human heart to be wanted, accepted and LOVED. The search for love has been documented, written into books and song, portrayed on television and the big screen - over and over for centuries. (Well, minus the part about the tv or big screen....)

It is the one thing that links us together and makes us all utterly alike. No matter what our background, skin color, belief system, language, we all feel the desire for love.

Similarly, we are all susceptible to the familiar feeling of heartbreak. It comes in different levels for different reasons at different stages of life, but it exists, even for those who have never found themselves in the confusingly wonderful throws of being in love.

I have seen and heard a lot about people with broken hearts recently - people of all ages who feel lost and unsure of where they are heading in life. I have been there. I understand the empty painful feeling that almost makes you aware that you are alive, while at the same time making you feel numb to all else.

What I have to say to those nursing a broken heart is this - you have been given an amazing opportunity. It may not seem that way right now, because the likelihood is that you were with someone (or not with someone, as unrequited love is just as painful) that made you feel like you had found your future. And now that future is gone.

But consider this: if you felt this way about someone who did not feel the same...imagine what is out there waiting for you in the form of a person who WILL feel the same way. That overused saying about timing being everything is overused for a reason - it's true. The reason that we are "not on the same page" as others throughout our lives is because those pages are setting us up to head in another direction.

There was a time in my life when I thought I would never feel the same way about a man the way I felt about a boy I once knew. We loved each other very much, but never seemed to be on the same level of love at the same time after a while. We broke up, I wanted him back, but he wasn't ready. He wanted me back but I had moved on. It seems like a frustrating game of missed shots and opportunities, but I know now that we were being set up for the individual paths we were meant to follow - and we were not meant to travel them together.

I write this because I am now on the other side of the table. For years I felt a huge void - a feeling that I would never again be able to love in that open and free way. Any maybe the freedom of love gets constricted after years of second guessing yourself. But then it happens. Just when you're not expecting it. You meet someone that not only makes you feel like you found your future - but makes you realize that you've stepped into it.

Imagine the feeling you have towards another person being completely reciprocated. And imagine that love you feel now being even stronger - stronger then you thought possible. Imagine being on the same page as the person that you love.

Do not take a rejection as a rejection to your personal, beautiful self. If someone has chosen not to be with you, it is because they are just as much not your someone as you are not theirs. This seems like an impossible thing to do - not to look at yourself for your flaws, wondering what made them turn away. But it's truly not you. And it's not them. It's life's path. One person in a pair recognizing that they are not where they are meant to be is a gift to both. You may not see it now, but you will.

I have been in these shoes as well. While in college I dated a truly wonderful guy - a great friend and confidant - but at some point I realize that the deep rooted love I was looking for wasn't there. Ending that was as painful as the end to my first serious relationship, but in a different way. This time I knew that it was the right thing to do, I knew that we were selling ourselves short and all the while I knew how much pain I was going to be causing him.

But years later we have both found ourselves on the paths we were meant to follow - and staying in that relationship would have meant sacrificing our true happiness.

I do believe that there are many people out there that you could be with, and have different levels of happiness. But you have to be daring, you have to watch, listen and feel to know when it's time to move on and find something more.

Not long after the end of my second serious relationship I met Nick. I was not looking and he walked right into my life. We count the day we met as the day we started dating because of how easily the pieces fell into place from the very first conversation. He continues to amaze me every day and has made me realize that every tear shed for every feeling of being unwanted was just leading me to him. He loves an understands me in a way that I never thought possible, and while I know that we will have our struggles, we continue to work together, not separately, to build our lives, and that means everything.

I found out that the first boy I mentioned got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend the very same day that Nick proposed to me. A very strange twist of fate, but an appropriate one as we helped shape each others lives and point each other in the direction of our individual one and onlys.

The second is with a wonderful woman who sees life the same way he does.

If things haven't worked out with someone that you love dearly - you have so much to look forward to. Because while that pain is all encompassing now, it just means that you are being put on the road to a love that fulfills you in ways you can't even imagine.

So take the time you need to be sad, to be hurt, and then step forward. Life is waiting.