My Newness

One thing to be said for growing up is opinions shift.  There are things I believe now that if I had a conversation with The Resa from 2002 she would be scandalized in disbelief.  I think experience has a way of altering our jaded viewpoints.  They say you should write what you know, that the best stories, however fictitious, are the ones that stem from truth.  And so, too, it seems we think what we know, rather we think according to what we allow ourselves to accept.  And all we choose to ignore makes it that much easier to not accept the things we claim to not believe.

Most people, though there are those few rare exceptions, but most people can't understand what they've never experienced.  We offer our empathetic I know how you feel when we have no idea how they feel especially if the only parallel we can draw to the hell they're going through is something as inane as having our ex best friend say something horrible about us behind our back.


We don't know anything.

And even if we have had the privilege of enduring some wretched hardship it still doesn't give us eyes to really see all the pain someone goes through.
We would do well to judge less and love more.

I kept finding my thoughts drifting to everything he must be going through. 
I'd stopped worrying long ago about what any of this was doing to me.
I am always fine, that's one of my gifts.
One tough cookie, that's me, albeit a delicious chocolate chip cookie, but still tough.

I realized today with all I have to communicate I talk too much.  Seriously.  Or I at least talk too much to the wrong people.  I communicate all of my heart and then wonder why others seem to use that truth against me. For being a woman whose lived on at least several corners of this long block of life I certainly am still very naïve.
I guess believing the best of people does that to you.
Sometimes they surprise you by walking through the doors and sometimes they sock you in the gut right when you least expect it.
 I always did say I like surprises.
 I guess the unexpected betrayals are in themselves surprises.

So there's that.

One thing The new Resa can't reason to the old Resa is that marriage is frightening.  It's supposed to be what I want most, it's supposed to be what I'll look forward to in my old age.  That's what I always thought I wanted.  I love love!  I'm like a female Romeo or Joel from Eternal Sunshine falling in love with everyone who pays me the slightest bit of attention.  You would think if I was as smart as I delude myself into believing I would learn from the repetition and repetition and get sick of men.


But I love men.

I love falling in love.  I love being in love.  I love making someone feel loved.  Holding responsibility for putting that smile on their handsome face?  Simply divine.  It's like playing those pieces by Yann Tiersen that I love to play.  It just makes me happy.  It makes me feel joyously overwhelmed.
Yet love also houses the greatest risk, the most inconsistent odds, the ability to instill more tears than I knew I housed.
So why the draw?  Was I secretly a masochist too?  Were we all?
Some joke, eh.

It was simple enough.
And as different as I knew I was, some things would always remain, in their simplicity.