This might be kinda long, so if you'd like to opt out of reading this post, go ahead guilt-free. I just need to get it out. I've been thinking a lot recently about who it is I want to be in terms of who I am now. My facebook 'about me' section says:

"I'm a crazy, passionate romantic. I'll dance with you anywhere. I'm a good mother cuz I have a great son. I'm a good friend. I'll go the whole 90 yards for the people I love. I love too much, but I don't think that's a flaw. I love God and find I'm stronger for depending on Him. I'm still a little bit of an idealist and I hope that never changes. I get lost in music. I feel free when I'm horse-riding. I see pictures in everything so I take as many as I can. I think any surface can be a canvas. I'm overly verbal but prefer that to miscommunication. I never think that it's too late for anything. I aspire to always be able to say that I am currently the best version of myself. I have been broken down, but with God's help I have risen from the ashes every time so far. So bring on the next potential heartache cuz I haven't even begun to love to the full extent and I will always refuse to hold back. Always..."

That was long, huh? Kinda like this post...I wrote that a couple years ago. I'm not sure I'm always moving in the right direction. Sometimes, I think I'm just taking steps back and I look at the person I used to be, the girl who wrote that, and think, "I wish I were still her." I aspire to always be able to say that I'm currently the best version of myself. I don't know that I can say that right now.

I am someone who can say truthfully, in understatement fashion, the phrase, "I've been hurt before." I heard Shontelle's Impossible recently and felt like it was a tribute to my last heartbreak. I know what it's like to feel like someone made a fool out of you simply by making you love and trust them. Somehow you're the chump because you opened up and allowed intimacy. I know what it's like to be in so much emotional pain, you can hardly move under the physical weight of it. But I don't want to be someone who lives my life like someone who's been hurt. I've already played the role of stupid chick dating the jock jerk who doesn't deserve her as the cinema audience roots for the nice guy best friend she seems to always overlook. Problem was, I went for the nice guy best friend as well, in a conscious effort to no longer be stupid chick, only to end up being more hurt because the trust was higher and expectation for pain lower. I felt like a whole new kind of stupid chick. I'm now in no mood to assume another clichéd role of damaged chick who's been hurt before.


I don't want to not have learned from my past mistakes or others' mistakes perpetrated on me, but I also don't want to be jaded by my past either. My heart is worth guarding, but not hiding. I'm definitely someone who qualified as a hopeless romantic. I'm not normally the kind of girl who thinks any romantic gesture is too 'mushy' as long as the right feelings are behind it. Despite my sarcastic veneer, I'm hard to gross out on the love-meter and fully acknowledge I can be a yucky, ooshy romantic myself and was always defiantly proud of it. But I wonder if at this point in my increasing singledom (and yes, singledom does increase with time!) I'd even know how to react to any of that. Those who know me best say I give off a 'no, thanks' vibe. Now, that's definitely something I project purposefully when I'm out for the night with my friends and some strange guy approaches me. But do I give off that vibe always? Am I so unprepared to risk getting hurt again that I also can't risk being happy again? If that's the way I've behaved, I haven't meant to. I also didn't mean to become this version of me I've unraveled into. Am I still someone who deserves to be with the guy who deserves to be with me? (If you didn't get that, read it again but it doesn't entirely make sense, so don't worry if you're still lost;)

I'd like to feel that I'm getting to that place of balance where I can accept my past hurts for how they benefit me and can reject them in the ways they'd hinder me. Maybe I can't entirely be that girl again. Maybe it'd be unwise to be as open as I used to be. There should be some effort involved, I'm worth that- and maybe acknowledging this is one of those beneficial lessons I needed to learn. But I've been listening to Paramore's The Only Exception (still not sure if it's a good thing that I relate to it) and I'd like to think that when the right exception comes along, I'd allow it and that we'd find ourselves mutually deserving of the kind of love that's worth the risk and merits my trust again... and some yucky, mushy ooshiness.