Bob and Weave...

Now playing: Lions & Tigers & Bears by Jazmine Sullivan

I'm dodging love right now.  I'm bobbing and weaving, ducking and escaping unscathed by the skin of my teeth.  I'm doing everything I can to avoid the trap.  Now you're probably wondering why anyone would describe love as a trap -- you might feel me on some level but you're really like, "huh?"  So here's what it is...

I've been in love before and I know it can be a dangerous thing.  I say dangerous because when you're in love, you change.  Your thoughts become consumed with this other person in your life -- your words and your actions become informed by their presence and your interaction with them.  It's impossible to add someone to your life without it impacting your life in some way and being in love is one of the most extreme ways your life can be impacted.  And like I said, I know this from experience.  I changed when I was in love.

Now change certainly isn't always a bad thing.  Change is necessary for growth.  But, it's difficult to welcome change when you've become comfortable with who you are and where you are in certain aspects of your life. I know that I have certain ideas about relationships and how they should go.  I define love in a particular way and I have standards for who, when, why, where and how I'm going to fall in love and enter a relationship.  Since I'm a perfectionist, I want the circumstances that lead to love and a relationship to be ideal or as ideal as possible.  This may be unrealistic but I despise realism -- it's the cousin of pessimism.

The problem with having such standards and being a perfectionist and resisting change is that when the opportunity to love does present itself -- and does so, in a way that doesn't meet my standards -- I get defensive.  I may recognize it for what it is but I really treat it like a situation that needs to be diffused, handled.  We all have heard the songs that describe love as this beautiful and overwhelming feeling or state -- where the person you're in love with is what you're most concerned with.  They mean the most to you, they have the most power to push your buttons and affect your emotions.  They are the most persuasive, even subtly, when it comes to changing your mind about something and it's most important to learn to compromise with them because in order for love to work with them, you have to be willing to make sacrifices.  But just how far do you have to go?

I don't want to fall in love and lose me.  I don't want to fall in love and lose the rationality with which I defined my standards for love and relationships.  I don't want to lose the ability to be consumed by things other than that person.  I don't want to lose sight of who I am, who I want to be and how I want to go about getting there.  I don't want to be in a position where I have to make sacrifices that jeopardize all of the other things I aspire to in life.  In other words, I don't want love to incapacitate me.  And, more importantly, I fear that it will.

I dodge love because I'm scared of it.  It's a very powerful emotion and I'm not very experienced in emotion so I don't handle emotion well.  I have been avoiding relationships and love because I don't want to be defenseless and get hurt again.  I don't want to be vulnerable.  For me, single means secure.  Engaging my emotions will take me to a place that, in the past, was dangerous.  It will take me to a place where I felt out of control.  For me love and relationships are like PTSD triggers... and I avoid them at all costs.  But I don't want to live that way.  I want to grow out of it and, as I said, that requires change.

Jazmine Sullivan is talking about how she's not scared of some things that would really horrify most people, if not, at least, make them nervous.  And I feel her on that.  I want to learn to ride a motorcycle, go tandem sky-diving and even publish my writing for others to ridicule or enjoy.  All of those things make me nervous but I'm more willing to do all of them - 3 or 4 times - than I am to fall in love again.  I'm risk-averse when it comes to my heart.  I'm rational, logical -- I'm all about what makes logical sense and I trust my mind to lead me in the right direction.  Love traps are definitely within the heart sphere.

So the next time I "trap" myself, I'm going to seek more change.  I'm going to trust that I can preserve the parts of me that comprise the essence of who I am and I'm going to free-fall.  I'm going to take the risk I'm most scared of -- falling in love again.