This week has been, to say the least, a whirlwind of change and emotion. It seems like my life skidded out of control and jumped the tracks somewhere along the line, which I suppose it did. It feels like just yesterday my ex was complaining nonstop and ridiculing me for wanting to go to university for "boring stuff" like human resources. But really it was just as recently, last week in fact, when she was telling me to be quiet because she was watching TV or refusing to peer edit a piece of writing because "you know I don't read." I'm fond of the old saying "hindsight is 20/20" because it is. Sometimes we have to step out of a situation-or be forced out of it-to see the whole picture.
I am leaving in three days for Baltimore, where I will be staying for most of the month with a friend. She is an incredibly brilliant person, creative, a fellow writer, and we have so much in common. The only caveat: I am undeniably, intensely attracted to her. I'm not certain the feeling is mutual, but in the couple of months we've known each other we've become quite close, and things happen when alcohol starts to flow and...
I'm afraid of falling in love again. I did it only once in my life. I don't like feeling vulnerable, and nothing leaves a person wide open and raw like falling in love. This goes double for when it fails. I have been "dumped" by girls before. Some of whom I'd slept with, others not. There was always a feeling of rejection and no shortage of "what if" questions, but those questions never kept me awake all night long, never had me sitting outside until the early morning smoking cigarettes and wallowing in pity and shame and defeat as I did this week. I can't lie; it was a learning experience. A growth opportunity. But I don't want to feel that way again for a long time.
I feel good tonight. At the very least I'm going on another adventure, a catharsis from the stressful trial of the past few months, and in the fall I am officially starting back to school to get my degree in Human Resource Management-Training and Development. Life is good. Life is fucking weird, for sure. But an ideal I've held dear for so long has rang true; things happen for a reason, even the bad things.