Honesty Hour

It's almost 4 in the morning, and now is about the time when my thoughts become brutally honest and my guard of what I may or may not write is let down.  I try to avoid extremely personal topics due to the amount that I value my privacy, but this is something that I just need to write out.  Perhaps by doing so, it'll cease plaguing my mind for a while.

I am not the kind of person to get emotional and wishy-washy about romantic things.  It's a bit of a contradiction, but I consider myself to be a hopeless romantic and a stone-cold realist.  Because you can, believe it or not, be a hopeless romantic without liking things of the typical romantic nature.  Really, it's actually possible.

I have no desire to get married.  Ever.  After seeing how marriage changes people and their behaviour, I've become disgusted with its lack of "good qualities" that so many people claim marriage to have.  Marriage changes people (and not for the better from what I've experienced), it's a case of take a lot, give a little, and creates its own seclusive club to where if you're not married, people won't talk to you, because you're not in the "marriage club."

In my eyes, there are just too many negatives in relation to the effect marriage has on people, and I want nothing to do with it.

When I say to people "I'm never going to get married," I try to make it come across as a light joke.  But honestly, I speak that statement with every ounce of good intent to follow through on it.  I have too many issues with matrimony that would ever make it possible for me to consider it at this point in life.

I'm not inclined to sentimentality.  I don't cry over wedding videos or cheesy romantic comedies.  I'm not easily wooed.

But every once in a while, my guard is let down (it must be), and I find my heart yearning for something more.  To have someone look at me as if I'm their whole world.  To be held in the strong arms of a man who loves me immeasurably.

And then after a few moments of experiencing this lack of judgement and sanity, those feelings pass, and my guard is up once again.

Lately though, I don't know what my problem is.  My emotions have not been as in control as I would like them to be, and I'm completely baffled as to why this is.  Perhaps it's because of things happening in my personal life that I have no control over, and not being able to control some things, it causes me to lose focus and thus lose control over the things that I actually can control - like my emotions.

More and more these moments happen.  And the fact that this is so, irritates me to no end.  I don't have time to dream about a life that I don't want.

I know that my heart is hard.  I know that this isn't healthy, and isn't supposed to be so.  But I will not sacrifice logic and friendships for something like romantic love and marriage.  The exchange is not worth it.

Still.  With a hardened heart, and walls built a mile high, how am I supposed to be vulnerable?  How am I supposed to learn to fully love those who are in my life, as well as letting myself be completely loved in turn?

I can't.  It isn't possible.  There is no both/and.  In this case, it is either/or.

So do I choose to let down those walls, and let my heart once again become soft and vulnerable to pain in order to let Christ wield me to grow as I need to?  Or do I remain closed and protected, keeping both pain and unconditional love from affecting me?

Obviously I know the answer.  Because what other choice is there, if I want to be fully and completely surrendered to God?  There really is only one option.

And perhaps I'll make the right choice someday.  Let myself become susceptible to the possibility of pain - and love - again.  Right now though, is not the time.

Because I know why I've shut myself down.  As a preemptive strike - they can't hurt me if I'm guarded against them.  But also because love equals loss, and loss equals pain.  And I've had enough of that for one lifetime.  I don't want to experience the pain of losing a loved one again.  It was too much the first time, and I don't know if I could (ever) handle it again.

I can't say I don't know what to do, because that'd be a lie.  I do know what to do.  But I don't have the courage or strength to actually go through with it right now.

I just...need to not focus on this for a while.