Snake Bites

I sat alone in my apartment this Friday evening. I had mixed feelings as I felt my free night from work was wasted to apartment cleaning and movies alone on the couch. Yet this night in solitude also allowed me to relax and think about being single, relationships, and how interesting it all is to me.

It seems to me that a relationship with a significant other is the most complicated, frustrating thing on the face of the planet we all walk on. It causes the most and deepest pains imaginable, but yet provides the most happiness. It's completely ambiguous. I do have to say that I am well acquainted with loneliness. I think it is funny that I know loneliness so well. It would be a lie to say that I don't get offers to dinner, to movies, for long walks, or drinks. Yet I find myself alone on a Friday night. My heart must be very fickle.

I know when I fall, I fall hard. It's a rare thing for someone to get past all my safeguards and lower the walls around my heart. It's rare that I allow this to happen because when I do, I usually scrape my knees and the palms of my hands on the sidewalk. It usually takes me a while to get back up, and when I do I am ready for the world again, only to find myself tripping and finding those familiar scabs. The crazy part of relationships is that it doesn't matter what I want. Yes, that's what I wrote. It does not matter what I want. If the other person doesn't want to be in the relationship then they won't be in it, and there I am as helpless as can be. There I am on the sidewalk inspecting my wounds looking for the person who was supposed to catch me as I fell. I think I could describe it as seeing the fireplace but being unable to feel it's warmth, or reaching into the darkness to feel nothing but air.

But like I said, love is ambiguous. When found, it's a natural high. It's being oblivious to the world around me because I am lost in that person's eyes. It's giving my heart away carelessly because in that moment I feel invincible and immune to all pain. When love leaves, I can usually feel the icy ghost of it caress my cheek in the dead of night reminding me of the warmth that was once there. I find myself so paralyzed by it like a snake bite, when all I can do is helplessly take one breath at a time and pray that my heart doesn't stop beating. That's how love is. I can be warned. I can be cautious. I can prepare myself all I want. When the snake strikes it's quick and unexpected in spite of all previous experience. And once bitten, there is nothing I can do is hope my heart doesn't stop.

"The worst things in life are to try to please and please not; to be in bed and sleep not; and to want for one who comes not." I'm not sure who wrote this, but I find it very true for I have experienced all three. The only anecdote I have found is breathing. Breathing is like time. As long as you are breathing time is moving. They say time heals all wounds. I disagree. Like the integrity of the skin, once the skin has been broken by a cut, laceration, or scrape...scar or no scar the integrity of the skin is never the same. The same is true of our relationships. No matter what we do, we are never the same once someone has placed footprints in our life. Whether they have walked miles or only a few steps we are affected and changed by them regardless of whether or not we want them to change us.

To be in love and be loved is the most perfect feeling in the world, and when taken away is the most heart-wrenching. However, without feeling the heartache we would never feel the warmth of love for there must be opposition in all things. It would be so nice to just feel the sweet love of another, however after being so acquainted with loneliness I know that I will never take the love in my life for granted. I know too well the pain of watching someone's back as they walk away and the distance between us increased. I have felt the hot tears stream down my cheek and I have faced several lonely nights. I have awaken in the night to a sinking feeling of coming to the reality that my dream was not real. I have felt my heart ripped clean from my chest and been driven to my knees countless times. It never gets easier, and each time seems to require a longer healing process. I look at the green grass of my neighbor's lawn and think to myself that the grass truly is greener on the other side. I feel all the water and lawn fertilizer in the world could not give me a lawn as beautiful as theirs, however I also know that this is foolish thinking. The key is being satisfied with my own lawn.