Don't Be Reckless

As I go through each day, I find myself taking notes. I take notes on a lot of things. Everything from a story I want to tell my best friend to something I need to remember to do later on. Over the last few days I have collected notes on this blog. And what is interesting is, they all seem to gravitate around the same theme, although I can promise you that was never an intention. They were just random thoughts that I wanted to be able to come back to and think through.

I thought through a lot of these things over the last few days. And today I was able to spend a lot of time by myself and really mulled things over. A lot of it is probably coming from my night last night. I spent the evening with a girlfriend from the gym – and met some new girlfriends in the process. It was a great night and it was wonderful to be out with someone who really is vested in you as you are with them. And what amazed me most, was at the end of the evening, the two girls I was with picked up the entire tab because they knew the situation I am in. Trust me, I fought it but didn’t win. And what amazes me is I don’t even get the tab picked up by men I go out with. I don’t ever expect it, but it is nice thing every once in a while, especially if it is in a dating situation.

My friend Ellen knows a lot about me from conversations that we have had at the gym. She always makes me feel so good about myself. She worries about me, like she says, any Jewish mother would. And recently she has been more concerned, as have I, that I am getting myself into a situation that won’t ever be what I want it to be. I am walking straight into a broken heart, and unfortunately know that I am. But I explained something to her last night and it came from a second revelation from my previous entry about “Ego Tripping”. I have been so wrapped up in so many areas of my life, focusing on one specific thing happening, that I miss out on all of the other things around me. But after the day I had this past Tuesday, I had another thought. I was in a moment (literally) that I couldn’t be happier in. I had exactly what I wanted right then. And I knew when I closed my eyes that night, that ever part of that moment would be gone so rather than keeping my heart behind a wall, I opened myself up, for just that moment. And I did it because if that was all I was ever going to get, I wanted to have ever bit of that moment. The problem lies in the fact that once that moment is gone, my brain (and heart) are still conscious of its existence. And that is where I get myself in trouble and where I get hurt.

But that leads me into the thing that I have always believed. Although now, I think I am beginning to question it. I have always believed that I would much rather have a broken heart, than to have never felt the things that brought me to that point of sadness. It’s similar to the cliché of “Better to have loved and lost, then to have never loved”. I probably end up getting hurt a lot more than I should with that frame of mind. I open myself up thinking that maybe, this time, it may work. It will be different. The problem is, I haven’t dated a man with any true kindness in a very long time. It’s not because I am picking the wrong ones. I just haven’t met anyone with understands what being kind to someone else is. One of my favorite lines/quotes is “Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours”. I follow the first part like it was scripture.

I don’t think I ask for a lot. Or maybe I do. I just have started to forget what it feels like to be treated well by a man. And that is why I have to continue to just do that for myself.