Just have to chew on some things

Love...

that is the theme lately...it overwhelms me, it consumes my thoughts, it is my heart’s desire. I have loved in my life. I mean...I am 35 years old. With no true role model of what love was, I forged ahead to try and figure it on my own. I am in love now...it has its days when it is the fairy tale I have dreamed about (as cliché as it might sound) and other days it is the ocean...seeking to drown me because I am too tired to stay afloat. Love is hard, love is vast, and love is what makes it all worthwhile. Love is what I fight for daily...sometimes a losing battle and sometimes my sweetest reward.

Today, it was my losing battle.

I love hard, intensely, and deeply. I love with everything that I have within me. I give my heart and soul to whoever the object of my love is. Does that always work out in my favor? Not even close...But God has granted me with the ability that no matter how badly I am hurt, I can (in time) offer my heart to another. Sometimes that is a blessing and a curse.

Today it was a curse.

As I was chatting with the man that currently has my heart, a man that for a few weeks I could tell that the end was near but I had promised him from the beginning I would never quit. I would never walk away…unless he told me that is what he wanted…in the midst of conversation today I receive this email:

 “i do not mean or intend to be disrespectful. i can love different people, you even mentioned understanding what that feels like. but you are right, i need to focus on one person. it is the part of growing and making a decision. i don't want anyone to be upset with me and so, i try to balance and juggle everyone as often as i can and it just gets to be too heavy and burdensome. eventually, i fall and so does everyone else i've been trying to handle. scriptures tell me i have to be true to God and true to myself. not doing so doesn't do He or me any good.  

i am going to focus exclusively on her. i loved her since i was a kid and i hurt her by not choosing to be with her and instead settling for what was safe and convenient to me before...a person who loved me in the way i love her. but love involves risks and faith. and i've learned that it should be selfish, not shared, exclusive and not collective. wanting to be with her will cost me a lot, including a lot of lonely and quiet nights, which i hate. but, she is worth it. i know there will be things that she does not bring to the table that i know that you do, and thus, the decision to pursue her might seem foolish. but, it's where my heart is. if i seek something with her and it doesn't pan out, and i lose you in the process forever, then that is the chance i take and consequence i live with. 

i love you dearly, danielle. but, i've got to follow my heart and it is with her. it always has been. she is the love of MY existence.”

He has decided it is time to give his whole heart to this women…someone that came back into the picture after we had been involved for some time. But that is his choice. Love is a choice. Sometimes the choice hurts.

The ironic thing is I understand completely how he feels. I have loved more than one man at a time. I know what it is like to want to split yourself with two people sometimes even three because sometimes our feelings don’t follow logic…but we have a choice.

He has made his choice.

I have made similar choices before. I can honestly say, I have loved every man that I have ever dated seriously. And I can honestly say, that it has never worked out in my favor.

A friend recently shared a quote that he read some time back. The quote simply states, “All women have three men ~ the one she loves, the one that loves her, and the one that takes care of her”

Well, I have not found that to be true in my life. I have had “the man who I love”, I have had the “men who want to love me but claim they don’t know how”, the “man who would love me if only XYZ would change.” You get my point. Real life is never as poetic as the writers and those we quote make it out to be. But, I think the more interesting question to ask is, “Can men and women love more than one person at a time?” Because that is what consumes me? When do you decide who gets your whole heart or is it better to fragment it here, there, and somewhere else?

So, I believe that no matter what…we can love multiple people at one time. We can attempt to share our souls with more than one person at a time because different people inspire different things at the same time. I have never inspired anyone to love me wholly…to pick me in the midst of the storm…to say I. Am. The. One. That. Is. Worth. It. Now, I am heartbroken but not broken…I am sad but not without joy…because I know that at the core of it all I am so close to the Proverbs 31 woman that God would have me to be. I am better because I have lost…I am hard to remember yet impossible to forget. I love you too…but…it never seems to matter because who I love never loves me back in the way I desire. I obsess. I fantasize about.