That Crazy Four Letter Word

Love

What does it mean to you? How does it affect you? How much do you let it influence you?

I can guarantee you that every one of you reading this post will have a slightly different answer. We all think of love differently and it affects us all in many, many ways.

After my success in the first round of 2012, I expected to go offtrack for a few weeks. A time to let my head catch up to my body as I certainly wasn’t seeing the real me in the mirror. Nearly nine months on, I still haven’t moved from where I finished the first round.

No, before you start guessing, nine months is just a coincidence – I am NOT pregnant!!

This year I had one of the most amazing holidays. I travelled to Hawaii to celebrate my thirty-first birthday. Most people choose to celebrate their birthdays with loved ones but generally I have found that being single and around thirty, your friends have families etc and getting away can be hard for a night out. So to avoid the disappointment of being alone on my birthday I decided to make it count. I thought that putting all those km between me and those I know would give a reason as to why I’d be celebrating my birthday alone.

Funnily enough, distance doesn’t matter. I still felt alone.

I’d promised friends that I’d avoid dating sites due to many reasons, including, ending up with married men or even just dishonest men. Each time the truth came out it left me disappointed and more certain that I was doomed to be alone. However, on my birthday, as I was sitting in the diner next to my hotel watching all the couples walk past, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to just jump online to find someone to chat to.

That’s where I met him. The guy who would play a major part in my life for nearly the next 6 months. He was amazing and we got along so well, we had heaps in common and he even lived in Rockhampton. We started chatting on a more regular basis and when I returned, I was only back in town a few days before we met face to face. The attraction was there and there were no awkward silences. I had no bad gut feelings and everything felt right. I was on top of the world. I’d lost weight, holidayed in Hawaii and met an awesome guy!

Out of courtesy of the guy mentioned above, I’m not going to give a lot of detail away, just the skeleton of the story.

Due to unplanned circumstances he ended up moving in with me in August and we became an instant defacto relationship.

Many people have described losing weight to me as an addiction that I have to quit. In hindsight, I wish I’d taken more of this advice aboard. I was still very weak and vulnerable.

To cut a long story short, in November, I decided that I couldn’t do this anymore due to many reasons both greater and lesser than the one mentioned above. Not many people knew that I had someone living with me. Not many people knew that I was dating someone. In fact as soon as someone told me I shouldn’t be in a relationship, I’d immediately respond that I wasn’t even when I was.

This has been one of the main reasons that I haven’t been blogging. I’ve been trying to respect his privacy whilst still trying to continue my journey with the hope that everything would work out.

Isn’t it funny how sometimes things just don’t?

Since the day that he left, upon my forceful request, I’ve been a mess. I’m very good at hiding things and only a few of you out there will know this but it’s consuming me and I need to let it out.

Throughout my journey I’ve heard the phrase “don’t eat your feelings, feel your feelings” over and over again without really understanding it. In the past only one other relationship has really ‘hit me’. I don’t know if that’s because emotions are heightened when you share your home with someone or because I’m finally at a stage where I can feel my emotions again. I am no longer suffocating these emotions with food of every type and colour. I am no longer binging.

 

I have spent endless hours crying, trying to analyse the situations. Why things happened and why I feel the way I do. Why did I make certain decisions?

This emotions stuff is a lot harder than I ever realised. Coping with emotions and hiding it from others is way, way harder than I realised.

I know they say love is worth it, but is it really? All this pain, anguish, sadness when it goes wrong, is it worth it?

These are the questions I’m now pondering. Wondering whether to just give up now. In the long run, it certainly seems the easier and least painful option.

So now it’s all off my chest and out there.