On Love

 

What is love? It seems we spend our lives trying to find the meaning of life itself, but one cannot understand life without feeling love.

I have spent so long trying to find my soulmate, that one person I can love truly. The man I’ll meet at the end of the wedding aisle, the future father of my children. So far, I haven’t find him yet, but that’s okay. Because I have found love elsewhere.
Love can go so far beyond one person. 

Love is for family, being born into an ancestral tree with complete strangers, nothing binding you but blood. You live with them, learn from them, and love them. Your mother and father give you life and you can spend your life alongside your siblings. You will love your children, those tiny innocent souls that you have created. And they will love you.

Love is also for your friends. The family that you choose. The people you volunteer spending time with because you enjoy their company. You laugh together, cry together, dance together. They can hurt you and help you, and you love them nonetheless.

Love is for lovers, both past and future. I still love my ex- not still in love with him, but the him that was when we were together. That him I still love, frozen in time, no matter what happens. We can fall out of love with people, but we cannot go back and unlove somebody. I love all the boyfriends I haven’t met yet, the ones I will fall in love with and spend time with.

Love is also for strangers. Basic humanity. I can love people I’ve never met, because we have the greatest thing in common; life. They breathe the same as I do, they love too, they have pain and joy. I can love somebody I’ve known for years, or somebody I’ve known for a day, because every human is worthy of being loved. 

Finally, love is for life itself. The feeling of wind, the sight of a sunrise. The feeling of bare toes on sand or encased in the waves of the sea. Watching the birds soaring in the air, eating good food, listening to beautiful music. Life and love are synonymous- you cannot have one without the other. 

I vow that I will go through life in love. In love with my family, my friends, partners, strangers, and life itself.

Because there’s truly nothing ever greater than love, is there? 

What’s the point in loving?

“Flames to dust, lovers to friends. Why do all good things come to an end?” says Nelly Furtado, one of my many idols. It was a song I sang many times in my youth, not understanding what she meant. Now I’m older and dare I say, wiser, and I have begun to overthink the song.

Love is the strongest and greatest emotion on earth. We crave it, we feel it, we search for it. It motivates us and confuses us.

All love stories start in different ways and in different places, but is usually as follows;

Boy meets girl. They date, get butterflies when they kiss, begin to fall in love. They date until they become in an official relationship. They meet each others friends and parents. They have sex, they have arguments. And unless they’re one of those lucky people that ends up settling with your childhood sweetheart, they break up.

Like the beginnings of a love story, they also end in different ways. It can be an abrupt, passion fuelled argument ending in screaming and punching, or it can end in an awkward conversation sitting across from each other in a silent room.

I started dating around seventeen, but never really found myself attached to the boys I was dating, and I ended things. In my younger years I never really focused on how they would feel about me breaking up with them. It’s one of the luxuries of being the break-upper, not the break-upee.

And then it happened to me. Honestly, I think the pain was more about my ego and pride than my boyfriend breaking up with me. But the one thing that really angered me was that in the beginning of our short lived romance, I didn’t like him. He pursued me, chased me, wooed me. Begged me to go out with him until I finally acquiesced. Our date went surprisingly well, and so did our relationship- until we broke up.

Afterwards, my heart mended and I met another boy, and the process happened again. This was a longer, more fulfilling relationship, but after two years I decided to end it. We’ll chalk it up to ‘personal differences’ as this is a blog post, not a therapist session. I was happy about my decision, he wasn’t, but even after trying again, it just didn’t work.

A year later, at a party, I met another boy. The night was honestly, as cliché as it sounds, magical. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but it was the most romantic beginning. He stayed behind at one of my parties to help me kick out the stragglers that wouldn’t leave at 5am, and we spent the whole night and day just talking. I suddenly realised that I didn’t want to date him. Well, I did, but I didn’t want the future break up that dating would bring. It’s a rather pessimistic idea, I know, but the fact is when you date someone, you either end up with them until death, or you will date until you break up. As nice as boy #3 was, I didn’t see myself walking down the aisle towards him at the age of 18.

So, upon our first meeting, I proposed an idea. What if we just had a wonderful night together, talking and getting to know each other, and never see each other again. That way it would forever be perfect. It would never be tainted by future arguments or betrayal, and whatever happens in our separate lives we could both look back on our one perfect night together. He liked the idea but disagreed, wanting to see me again.

I am not a very strong willed woman, and so it’s safe for you all to assume that yes, we saw each other again after that. A lot. We dated for a while, and it was nice. But guess what? it ended. He was heartbroken, but again, I’d made the right decision. He was moving away and I was studying and it wasn’t right. We stayed friends for a while, but after he moved away he turned into a dick and then we never spoke again. Every time I catch myself thinking about it, I just wish that I’d stuck to my guns and had kept that first night for what it was- perfect. Now, when I think back on that night, every other little detail comes to mind about our subsequent relationship and painful break up.

I renounced dating after that, and after three years of living the charmingly fun yet sometimes lonely single life, I’ve met another boy. Telling me not to overthink it is like telling the sun not to shine; impossible. Already, within the first few weeks of dating, I’m already jumping the gun, wondering what painful mess this new boy is going to bring into my life? Will he cheat on me? Am I going to be heartbroken again? Will I hurt him? Is it… worth it? Again, at the age of 22 I’m not ready to settle down yet, so I know this relationship will end at some point.

But I’m okay with that.

I’m not the type of girl that meets a guy and would marry him right that second. I don’t mind that I’ll date different guys, have different relationships. Because when I finally find the right guy, and end up marrying him, I know that I’ve lived my life, experienced other relationships, but found the best one for myself.

Some girls walk into a store and find their perfect shoes sitting there in front of them. Some girls have to try on a few before. I’m going to try and think of it that way.

As the old saying goes: you gotta kiss a few frogs before you catch a prince.

Anyway, back to the question in hand: what’s the point in loving? There’s a high percentage that my new relationship won’t work out in the long run. (I’m being realistic, not pessimistic guys, jeez.) But I really am fine with that. Friends and partners come and go, and I believe that different people are brought into your life and taken out, but they imprint on your life and leave you changed afterwards. They are in THAT section of your life for a reason, and if they’re not in a different part of your life, that’s fine. The 18 year old version of me and 22 year old version of me are very different, so I doubt my first relationship would’ve worked out for long anyway. We change, we adapt, and grow up, constantly. It makes sense that sometimes, we outgrow people. We’re all on our own journey in life ,and sometimes people walk with you for a while, and sometimes they need to go their own way too.

I don’t mind getting my heart broken again. It will heal, as everything does. And falling in love is worth it, it really is. We can’t walk around in a bubble of plastic wrap to protect ourselves from the world, and we can’t harden our heart to protect it. We have to accept our decisions, accept falling in love and new people, and what will be will be.

All good things may come to an end, but there’s plenty more to come after.

That’s all folks, for another 3AM rambling.

xoxo, Molly.

Revenge is… Happiness?

The best form of revenge is to be happy. Truly. The burning rage people feel when they are hurt by someone, only hurts themselves. We torment ourselves, replaying the same thing over and over again, the hurtful words or actions that someone has caused us.
So I began to think, how can I turn this anger, this hurt, into something productive? People say that every cloud has a silver lining, and this is true.  So when you are upset, hurt or angry, instead of festering over it, hurting yourself, turn it into something that will make you happy.

I was in the library, studying for finals when I had an argument with my ex boyfriend. When the phone call ended, I couldn’t even concentrate on my work because I was so fixated on everything he said. I lost out on some valuable hours of education because of this boy, and so I began to use this to my advantage. Whenever I thought about him, and I couldn’t concentrate on my work, I began to clean my room. For some reason, whenever I have a clean room, I have a clean mind. And then I would organise my notes, printing helpful articles for my work, making schedules that would help me with my studies. And eventually, whenever I had a negative thought, I would automatically start working. one bad thought would make me do hours of work to help my education, instead of lying in bed chain-watching some Netflix programme. And so easily, instead of being angry over my ex boyfriend and focusing on every stupid argument, I used it to further my education, not wasting my time thinking over it.

Next, if I had an argument with someone, and I was focusing on what I didn’t say,  what I should’ve said, or if I didn’t do something, I would start exercising. And the pattern continued- instead of getting upset over petty arguments, I began to work out, doing press ups and sit ups, going for a jog. Not only would this clear my mind, and help me think straight, but soon I began to get healthier, and stronger. Just like that, I managed to turn all of my bad feelings, all the negativity, into something positive for me and my body.

Its not a tried and tested form of counselling, I know. And maybe it won’t work for everyone. But for me, it feels amazing that I can make something good out of every negative feeling, everything bad that happens. And the next time something bad happens, I won’t get too upset, or angry, because I know I can use it for my benefit, to be happier.

 

Everyone is not as happy as they look.

Setting off to university in my parents car crammed with all of my stuff, I was excited to begin a new chapter of my life. I was finally going to be living with a group of people my own age, and I imagined it as some kind of 90’s chick flick, where we’d sit on the sofa eating popcorn and watching corny films, or cry over a tub of ice cream about boys, wearing face masks and having sing-alongs. And it wasn’t like that, it wasn’t like living with my best friends. While my first year was filled with a lot of fun, I didn’t get on with some of the girls in my flat. They all did the same subject, I didn’t. I had my boyfriend over a lot of the time, and I was working and concentrating on making friends on my course. And so, what begin as enthusiastic friendship turned into me feeling isolated and alone. Now, I had a lot of friends both at home and at uni, so it didn’t phase me that much, and it dawned on me that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, the girls were just in a clique, didn’t have any friends themselves so stuck together like a boring pack of hyenas. I was naive, but eventually came to realise that life is not like a film. in fact, films glorify and romantisise everything about life, giving us false expectations of what life should be like.

And so, when Christmas came around, I was in the pub with some old friends, and I ended up telling one how I didn’t feel it was fair that everyone had great housemates and flatmates, while mine were shit. I told him how I’d go on facebook and instagram, and see all the cute photos – “house meal with the gang!” or “flat girls night out!” and get jealous. And then he told me that a) I was being dumb, and b) that everyone pretends to be happier than they actually are. He told me that people aren’t going to put on facebook when they’d argue or felt isolated with their flatmates, or when they felt ugly. They weren’t going to show instagram their breakdowns and tantrums, but instead, put happy photos on to make themselves feel better, even though it was a lie. Instagram pages, full of little photos just show the highlights of everyday life. They’d show pictures of the best parts of their life- and none of the bad. And this ‘best of’ feature means we obsess over other peoples couple pictures and feel crappy about our own relationships, see their ‘Squad goals’ pictures and doubt our own friendships. See their gorgeous selfies and feel baad about how we look when we don’t have makeup on or our hair done. It feeds into the competition of ‘whos-got-the-best-life’, a page where even though your life isn’t perfect- far from it- in a series of pictures, it appears to be.

And it’s true, we compare our lives with what we see on film, or on our friends social media, but we don’t know the whole story. As the phrase goes; you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. And it made me feel better. Our whole lives, we are told and trained to search for the ‘elusive butterfly of happiness’- a term I’d recently discovered. I’d have moments where I didn’t really know how to be happy, or even if I could be. It seemed that the few shining moments of happiness I had were merged in a sea of feeling shit, upset, angry or just numb. So I almost take comfort in knowing that sometimes, especially on social media, people are not as happy as they seem. Now, I never feel bad about my own life from seeing other people online. I recently spoke to an old friend, at a different uni, and looked like she was having the time of her life, going out all the time, new friends, new boyfriend. It was only when I spoke to her on the phone she told me she was quite heavily depressed and miserable. There is a song called ‘Wear Sunscreen’ by Baz Luhrman that gives advice on life, and to be honest it is one of the most accurate things I have ever heard, and never fails to make me feel better. One bit that always sticks out to me is when he says “Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.The race is long and in the end, it’s only with yourself.”

We spend so much time comparing our lives to what we see from other peoples when it doesn’t matter, at all. At the end of the day, you are the protagonist of your life, and your life is controlled by you only- your decisions, mistakes, choices. It is your life that matters, not what you see of someone elses. You never know what that person truly feels or who they are from an instagram page, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because it has no relevance to your life. So, the main thing I try to keep in my mind now is to focus on how I, myself, can make my life happy, not to compare it to other peoples, and most importantly, understand that there are going to be rough times ahead, bad periods- maybe years even, when you’re not okay. But you’re not alone in this, something easily forgettable. Life is hard, for everyone, but you need to focus on yours, and making it as happy as it can be.

Anyway, late night ramblings over. Peace out. xoxo

First Impressions

I’m pretty sure many people have heard the saying ‘First impressions count.’
I was thinking about this statement today and I was wondering about the truth in it.

Firstly, lets think about places. When you first enter a house, or a pub, you are overwhelmed by trying to take everything in. The first day I moved into my flat at university, parents right behind me, I noticed three doors- one of which was extremely heavy. I remember it used all of the strength in my toothpick-like arms to open.

I met one of my future flatmates unpacking all of her belongings, her parents also with her. After introductions, I finally entered Room 8 of my flat.
It was a small room, a blank canvas. There was a bright blue carpet and plain white walls and a pin board with nothing on it. Over time, I have hovered said carpet many times, I have pinned up pictures and maps and tickets on my pin board and decorated my room, making it personal. I have got used to the door after drunken nights out stumbling home, or outside smoking. I later realised, six months down the line, that the flat I lived in looked completely different to when I first saw it that day many months ago. Everything of course has remained the same, but instead of looking at it with inexperienced eyes of a fresher, excited to move in, I now see the place where I leave- the time I dropped my soup in the corridor, the time in the kitchen where I’ve done work. And I realised- my first impression of the flat had completely changed and adapted to what I am now used to.

The same goes for people. I have met people that I liked on first introductions, only to later find out that actually, that girl is a manipulative, backstabbing bitch, or that guy is an offensive pig. I’ve met people that for some reason, I’ve disliked, only to realise later on that they are actually very decent people, and I have become friends with them. Which brings me to another saying- don’t judge a book by it’s cover.

In life, you will meet a range of people- nice people, funny, horrible, bullying, kind, all sorts. But this takes time to find out what people are. You aren’t going to meet someone and they will introduce themselves saying “Hi, I’m Carly. I’m going to bitch about you all of the time and steal your boyfriend because your friendship means noting to me” and you aren’t going to hear the guy you don’t like saying “I’m really nice, and I’ll be here for you even thought you don’t like me” because it’s not what people do. First appearances are misleading. It takes time to know another human being. So, whenever you meet a new person, remember that you would not liked to be judged on the first few words that you say, but rather your actions over time. We’re so quick as humans to jump in straight away to conclusions but I plead, take your time. human beings and complex machines. you need to decode everyone in individual ways. And you never know, if you take the effort to truly understand and analyse someone, you can make a true friend for life.

Peace out guys.