While talking with my father about his love (and my hesitation) towards cruise control, I told him that I've read far too many reports detailing faulty cruise control malfunctions for me to let my car drive itself. I jokingly reasoned that I have trust issues. The sad thing is that it's not really that much of a joke.
With the upcoming release of Taylor Swift's new album, there's been so much press about the meaning behind her lyrics, which song is about the hermano Jonas, which one is about John Mayer (what the whaaaaat??), or Taylor Lautner, or any other number of rumored romances. It got me thinking that this chick has been pretty screwed over by guys (I'm sorry but breakup by text message is just plain painful), and yet she has no problem just jumping into another romantic entanglement. If my love of her music wasn't enough, her fearless (pun intended) attitude towards love is overwhelmingly impressive.
As with a good majority of my posts, the inspiration for this particular self-realization came from a random itunes song. MoZella (a wonderful little singer I highly encourage everyone to check out) sums up my current view towards relationships in her song "Light Years Away." It's about looking back on how screwed up you are at the immediate moment of a breakup, and how it changes you. Not that I was ever any good at relationships to begin with, the last serious one I had took it's toll. Each time we fought, I was told he was trying to change but it wasn't going to happen overnight. But I can only be expected to wait around for so long. And while it's easy to sit and play the blame game, I will own up to my part in our downfall. I gave up long before we broke up and just waited for him to screw up. Towards the end, I started to realize that all the promises we made to each other were not going to hold up and I wasn't going to get my happily ever after. That realization broke my heart.
I don't let people into my life easily. I don't just have a guard up, I have a whole army. There are few times in my dating career when I took the wall down, and each time, without fail, I've been burned. This was the explanation I gave when this particular boy expressed his interest in pursuing a relationship. History has taught me to keep that armor around my heart, and once again, I was proven right. I don't regret that this particular relationship is over, not by a long shot. I wish him well and I hope his life works out the way he wants it to. But it still hurts when you think about the fact that it's been two years since you even talked to the someone you thought was your forever.
I'm not normally one for airing such deep emotional issues in the public square, but I feel like without some sense of acknowledgement then I'll never really get over this hurdle. So let's just consider this me chipping away at the armor.