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“She wasn’t afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path.
Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in future, she might regret the choices she made now.
‘I’m afraid of committing myself,’ she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.
Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic disappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pain, loss and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

Paulo Coelho is one of my favourite authors. I don't know if it's because he speaks to my personality or if he says all the things I wish I could say and in a much more eloquent way. He's a bit...bittersweet.
I obviously need to read the book Brida. Because that passage above? Says exactly everything about how I used to feel about love, or the search for it. In the past, the more cynical me was so scared of commitment, of being with one person, of falling in love. Scared of the eventuality of getting hurt and heartbroken.

And then I realized. . .what a fucking idiot I am. I can't protect myself like that! That's like never leaving the house because you're afraid you'll get hit by a bus. Of never eating anything because you're afraid you'll get food poisoning. In every other area of my life I was a daredevil, I took chances, I took risks. My motto was (and still is) to live life fully with no regrets. So how could I ignore one of the most important parts of life? Love? How could I ignore love?

So I slowly started changing. I became more open to being with someone. I started dating someone that, by all accounts, I maybe shouldn't have dated. He was younger than me, on a different path than me. But he made me happy. And to me, happiness is rare. It's not something that everyone experiences. I could have conversations about nothing, everything with him. To a girl that used to hate talking on the phone, I now spent 2+ hours just. . . talking.

I don't know if I was falling in love. I haven't changed completely. I'm still a little wary. It's baby steps. Baby steps. I knew I was getting comfortable and starting to really enjoy my time with this person. I wouldn't call it love, I'd call it care. I cared for him. There were issues, but the issues didn't matter at that point because. . .I enjoyed him. I enjoyed his company.

And then comes the inevitable. The heartbreak. Long story short, we had a fight. Where I said some horrible, horrible things. Things I didn't mean. Things that maybe I used to mean when I was more cynical and angry and a different person, but after he changed me little by little, things I no longer meant. And I clung back to my prior self. The self that couldn't handle the thought of getting hurt, of getting heartbroken.

Except it still happened.

I still got heartbroken.

And I spent the day in bed. And moped. And didn't eat a thing. And felt numb all over. And went over everything in my head. And realized. Realized. This was it. This was what I had feared before. This heartbreak, this is what I had been so scared of.

And I realized, it wasn't so bad. Yes. It hurt. It hurt like hell. There was no denying that. But it wasn't the end of the world. My life wasn't over. For a while, yes, my life might be a little empty and yes, I was a lot sad. But life still went on. My friends and family were still there. People in the world were hurting more than me.

And I learned to be thankful. Because even though I hurt so much at that moment, I realized that he had opened me up and let me experience things I wouldn't have experienced otherwise. He had opened me up to love, opened me up and help me become willing to get hurt.

So to all the women out there, who are like me, who are so jaded and cynical and don't want to fall in love or date or be in relationships because they're scared of getting hurt, I just want to say. . .Yes. It hurts. It hurts when it's done. But it will never be the end of your world. Yes, you'll cry and your heart will feel pain and you'll be so sad. But, honestly, if you evaluate the relationships, hopefully that pain was worth it. Because I'm so much more thankful that I got to experience him. And the pain I went through when it was over, was a kind of awakening to help me realize that I was changing. Into a different kind of person. A person willing to love.

And this sounds so mushy and kind of ridiculous but. . . it was just something I had to write. A feeling I had to express.

Originally written 2012