Thoughts on Love

I've been thinking about love. Most people want it, most people want someone to spend the rest of their lives with me. But I'm doing everything i can to avoid it. Subconsciously I've even been sabotaging my own relationships.

I think I'm terrified of love. I'm terrified that I'll never really be loved by anyone, I'm terrified I'll never be loved at all and I'm terrified that if I really let myself love and be loved I'll only end up broken hearted. Instead I use my family, my job, my sexuality and my own appearance as reasons to justify why I can never be loved, never have a real relationship.

But what it all really comes down to is that I'm terrified. I'm terrified I'll never be able to find someone who can love me for who I am. I'll never find someone who thinks I'm beautiful, who finds my nerdiness endearing, or who knows my little habits.

I shrug a lot. But who understands why?

I can't sleep during thunderstorms. I panic if I don't have my necklace. I almost always have bruises on my shoulders. I mute certain parts of movies and tv episodes. I don't go to church. I sleep with my phone under my pillow and on vibrate.

And all I really want is someone who will want to understand why I do them.

I define love as wanting to know a person completely, of being able to sit with a person and having a million things to say after 40 years together, but not needing to say a word. I see love as wanting to fall asleep and wanting to wake up with the same person next to you every day for a thousand years. It's wanting to walk hand in had through the park and being there, every day, when they're on top of the world or being smashed under it. Love is not asking someone to change but in accepting them for who they are. Love is magic, it's the north star, what you aim for.

And it terrifies the hell out of me.

@megshensley: it's a pit of your stomach can't breathe heart palpitation always dreaming situation. When you picture your future they're in it.

@TtownAmstaff: I always felt like w/romantic love it's not something you can really define, you just sort of know it, you feel it or you don't

@AmandaKirchner : as for love, le sigh, if something good happens whose the first person u wanna tell? That's usually the one u love the most.

@MormonLesbian: I'm too sassy right now. Everything I thought of was followed by me thinking, "That's not love; that's an erection," haha

Tiny Post (2 years)

You said two years was a long time to wait for love,
I said two years down the road I'll be just fine.


Well it's two years down the road and I'm alright
It's two years down the road and life's moved on
But it's two years later and I'm still waiting
I'm still loving, I'm still holding on
to two years waiting for you.

1. I started writing this as a weird piece of poetry.
2. I want to break out my guitar and turn it into a song
3. I don't know how to play my guitar
4. Anyone wanna help?

An open letter to God

Hi guys, this came about from a comment I made to Sarah earlier... and well.... it might actually explain a lot about me. - me

Dear God:

As a child I loved you. I strove to do what you said was right, I tried to follow the path you set for me and I tried to be the person your word said I should be. As a teen I went to your house every week and devoted myself to serving your people. But as I grew older my faith in you began to fade.

I never could understand how a God who was all about loving thy neighbor and honoring and respecting others could condemn the love I felt in my heart. I still don't understand. What I do understand is that you have always been the God your people needed you to be. You were once the vengeful and wrathful God your people required. They needed a God with that anger to release them from bondage and bring them into your land. But they also needed that God who would leave then to wander in the desert for 40 years because they disobeyed. There had to be consistency, and I get that. But then things changed, you sent your Son and changed from the wrathful God to the loving God. But there are still parts of that vengeful being that teach against love, fidelity and honesty. And I can't understand that.

I believe in you, I have since I was a child. But you are not the God I need you to be. And you are not the God so many of us need you to be.

I can't believe that a God who is a loving, caring God would condemn me to an eternity in Hell for loving another woman. I can't imagine condemnation for love. But if you're going to condemn me for who I am then you're not a God worth worshiping. I'd rather be in Hell for being myself then in Heaven for pretending to be something I'm not.

But perhaps the problem is not you but your church. The church presents your message and oftentimes the one they present is an awkward combination of your vengeful persona and your loving persona. The church condemns me and those I love. 

I have always loved going to church. It wasn't just the message and it wasn't just the beliefs I had but it was also the people. Your people. They loved me for who I was, or at least for who they knew me to be. And many of them loved me unconditionally and completely. Those people stood beside me throughout my depression and suicide attempts. They were the only ones to look for my scars and check for new ones. Your people were my people, and I loved them.
 

When I realized I was gay, or at least not so straight I told the people I loved. I told the people I thought I could trust. When I was 17 I had enough strength to tell the people in your church that loved me the most. Your people, the ones that were supposed to love me, the ones that had supported me, the ones that had cared for me in my darkest hours turned their backs on me. I was no longer loved, rather they condemned me. They removed me from the positions I volunteered for and they limited my involvement in the church. Sermons were directed at me and I was ostracized. Is this the family and the love I was meant to find from your people?

I was no longer one of your people. I no longer found comfort or solace in the arms of your church. I was no longer loved. Were we not supposed to love our brothers and sisters? Were we not supposed to love our neighbors? When did I move from one of your children to one destined for Hell? 

Maybe you are not the problem, but your church. But either way, I can not put my faith into a system overseen by a deity that condemns me for love. You are not the God I need you to be, and your church is not the one that I need it to be. More than that, you are not the God you should be, and your church is not what it should be.  

I still love you. I still believe in you. But it is not enough. I can not put my faith in you, I can not lean on you and I can not depend on you. I must stand on my own two feet, for there is no one else that will support me, and I can't believe that you will be there to carry me when your people were not. 

I no longer identify myself as Christian, or as a Baptist. Rather I identify myself as a Twittertarian. They have become my church, my strength, they have become the family your people were supposed to be. If being who I am condemns me to a seat in Hell, then I know that those who love me unconditionally, as your people were supposed to, will be with me, and they will always love me for who I am. 

Your people chased me from your church. I haven't set foot inside a church since I was 18, except for this past September for my sister's wedding. It has been 7 years, and I'll gladly wait another decade before setting foot inside one of your houses that condemns me so strongly for being the person you made me to be. If it falls to that... then reserve me my seat in Hell. 

I told a friend you no longer listened to me, and I believe that to be true. But I hope one day that my voice might matter again, that your church might accept me and that I might once more be loved unconditionally by those you call your own.

With the last of my faith,
-Jess

(Obviously I've got a lot on my mind... I'm open to thoughts, reactions, comments, but this was something in my mind that I needed to say, I needed to write down, I needed to admit.)

Grand Romantic Gestures

For some reason I've been thinking about grand romantic gestures today. So I asked around and I heard a few examples. One friend proposed to her girlfriend. Another friend moved across states to be with her then girlfriend. (Funny enough both girlfriends mentioned are my exes) But I've been thinking about the most romantic thing I ever did for a girl. I've done some sweet things. (in my opinion) I've written poetry, bought flowers (expensive ones at that), fixed dinners and done whatever romantic things I could. But really the most romantic, most grand gesture was writing a 1 and 1/2 page love letter to my then girlfriend. And we're not just talking any love letter, remember I was a literature major. This was all flowy and flowery and well you'll see. So in honor of  grand romantic gestures, I'm sharing the letter I wrote.

10th October 2005


My Dearest Love,


My heart beats rapidly at the thought that I might address you as such. I had hoped that upon the writing of this letter your heart would have felt mine beat against it once more. I am sorrowed by the distance that still lies between us, but my soul is hopeful that this may soon be remedied. I pray nightly to feel your love in my sleep and it is my deepest wish that you pray the same. My soul often aches for you, yet my heart continues through the days, powered by the knowledge of your love. My mind is powerless to master the words needed to express how I feel for you. Yet nonetheless my pen continuously glides across the paper in a ritualistic dance performed solely for you. Through my mind remains unable to express my love for you, with every beat my heart broadcasts it to the listening world. I implore you, my love, that should you ever doubt the depth of my emotion that you simply listen to my heart.


24th October 2005


Much time has passed since I embarked on this journey my love, yet I remain confident that soon my greetings will reach you. I have dreamt often of you since I last gazed upon your beauty and upon each sunrise I wake with tears in my heart, sorrowful at the realization that once more my dreams have deceived me. I pray that you know that I look upon you as one would the North Star, you are my constant, my direction, my guide. I turn my gaze to you when I am wandering this infinite plane. My dependence upon you is the motivation for my life. For several brief moments, independent though they were, I was truly devastated with the thought that I may never feel your embrace again. I love you my dearest.
While others hurl curses upon the almighty, I praise him for by his grace he has presented me with an angel whose face is your own. I fear that before I complete my tribute to your goodness I must visit with the land of Morpheus. Before I venture until the realm of dreams I share with you my greatest fear, that all my memories of us, that all the memories are simply dreams and that soon I will wake into a nightmarish world where I have neither you nor your love.


7th November, 2005


My darling, within this letter I grant to you the ability to read my soul. Be cautious though, my heart, in some places my soul is quite torn and tattered, but do not worry, for every day I have you my soul is repaired a little further. Though you may doubt it darling you are making my life whole once more. A year and a half ago the skies I looked upon were permanently dark, mere months later I met you, I fell in love with you, and my skies cleared up because of you. My heart, you have saved me from my greatest damage, myself. For that I am forever grateful to you. I love you with all the love in the world. I pray that this letter finds you quickly and safely and that it brightens the darkness cast into your heart by the distance between us. I hope that you may feel my love more strongly now then upon the first time I told you of my love.


From your heart,
-J



As you can tell, it took me a while to right the letter. Beyond that I went through a series of drafts and in the end I wrote it on paper from a sketch pad, attempting to make it look like parchment, and I used a fancy pen to write it out. I sealed the letter itself with red wax and an old ring I have.

The then girlfriend and I were living about an hour apart and I was trying to do what I could to reassure her of how I felt. She was the first person I think I ever really loved. The first person I ever pictured a future with. The first person I ever wanted a future with. The first person I did a lot of things with. And she meant a lot to me, in some ways she still does.

But anyway, what's the most romantic thing you've done for someone you loved? Or what's the most romantic thing you've had done for you?

Night folks.
- JR

So I've been on Spring Break...

Hiya folks. So I've been on Spring Break, as made obvious by the title of this post. Which is the reason I've been lacking in updates recently. So for that I'm apologizing.

In retrospect my Spring Break has been incredibly unproductive. I've twittered away the hours, worked on gaining achievements on various Xbox 360 games and most astonishingly i even had time to read a book. However, my schedule has been so booked that there obviously hasn't been to to touch on the pile of grading I brought home with me over break. Oops.

As it is, I'm currently in the back seat of my brother in laws car as we're on our way to see a movie and go to dinner. My sister has been after me to visit them for about 8 months ( they've only been married for 6). So I made the trip to Columbus on Friday and I'm spending a few days up here before school starts again on Monday. So, regular updates will be coming back soon.

Additionally, my student teaching is coming to an end in two weeks. After that my updates should be coming much more frequently.

So I realize this is a tiny little post. But basically I'm not dead and will return to updating soon.
<3