Unrequited my Ass.

I have this problem

And seeing as it's 1:13 am on Saturday morning and I have yet to go to bed, even though I'm beyond exhausted, throw in the fact that I have to be leaving my house at 8:15 this morning and the fact that the reason I'm up so late is because I needed to finish the book I was reading; my mind refuses to shut off so I have decided to write it out.

Rawr.

Okay- so I suffer from this double edged affliction. It is in my nature, my personality, my very core to care about people. I strive to love unconditionally, judge as little as possible, and most of the time even when I'm making jokes about someone else, chances are I'd still take a bullet for them. There are countless people who I'd gladly step in the line of fire between, not because I'm searching out a hero title or looking for something postmortem, but because I hate to see other suffer. I know what it's like to bear pain, to look in the mirror and not recognize the person who is looking back at you. I can sympathize and I can empathize,and more often than not I can feel your pain. I'm a "good listener" because when you tell your story, I feel your emotions. Weird as it sounds, its the truth. It's not something I would trade for the world however. I want to share in your life with you, I want to be there for you, I want to be able to fix it, and when I can't put a band-aid on it and help you get back up, I want to be able to take the ride with you, if not for the sole reason that I can't bear to see you go it alone.

The problem lies when I begin to care more about another person than they care about me. Which of course is my own cross to bear, but its something that has been weighing on my mind tonight and this is my blog and thus I will say what I want. :)

I am constantly meeting new people and "falling in love" with their personalities. I start to build relationships with people, friendships, connections with the people I engage with. And then something comes down to the nitty-gritty, we move away from each other, our classes change, we head off to college or forget the person's last name. When these connections sever, there's a pain in my chest, moments of restlessness and longing that I can't explain to anyone. When these connections die down and I'm the one trying desperatley to keep our relationship afloat, i can't see where things went wrong. Granted I know that people move on and go their seperate ways, but for people who I truly care about I'm most often the last one left clinging to a floating raft that never could float.

I'm going to share a very personal stories with you (look at that, already I'm doing it again):

I mentioned my friend Dan a few blog posts ago- who I met years ago at karate when my old crowd was still there. He slowly became one of my really good friends as being a part of the same program and age group brought us together multiple times a week. When I started dating our mutual friend Adam, Dan and I got even closer. We would knife fight during breaks at karate, eat dinner together, play on the playground together, partner up in class together. One time, he even managed to punch me in the nose, but it was those experiences that would bind us for life. When Adam and I broke up, he was one of the first to be there for me, even though Adam was a mutual friend, and despite our nasty, painful break-up, Dan still remained very good friends with me. I used to try and pretend he was my brother because then it gave me some sort of legtimate tie to him, some way of knowing that no matter what happened he'd still be there for me. Then there was the time that I crushed on him, and the time that he thought I would hate him for not reciprocating. Back then, even when I was crushing on him, I think I was really just looking for a way to lay claim with him. If we ever went out, I could call him my ex, and know that he would forever be a part of my life. Of course though we remained friends, because who let's a silly crush get in the way of their friendship? I can remember my friend Arianne and I planning Dan a going away party when he left for school, with a sense of knowing that it was probably the last time our group of friends would ever actually be our group of friends. I saw him one more time before he left for school that night, I was getting ready to be a junior in high school and trying to figure a lot out, and the night he left for school I let myself cry myself to sleep. Maybe it was because I was reading New Moon at the time, or of how attached I was to him, but there was a hole in my chest that consumed me. I listened to MayDay Parade's "Jersey" a thousand times over because I understood what they meant when they sang "and Jersey just got colder, and I'll have you know I'm scared to death that everything you said to me was just a lie until you left." In the beginning, whenever he came home he made it a priority to see me, I can remember him coming to pick me up from my house to drive me to karate because there were things he needed to talk about, I can remember having just gotten my license driving off to the dinner to see him. But then, life gets in the way. People get busy, people begin to have other plans, and because we are not in the forefront of each other's minds, we have a hard time keeping in touch. Scroll across his facebook wall and occasionally you will see posting that I write to which he will respond and we will have a very basic conversation. But I initiate. because there is a large part of me that believes I'm pumping air into a broken raft. Granted every once in a while he'll do something that astounds me, like show up at the Cardboard City that I was hosting, even just to pop in for a minute. But it still hurts me at times when I realize that we don't have the relationship we used to, and we probably never will again, and what hurts more is that most of me feels like I'm the only one feeling this way. Do I want Dan to read this? Yes and No. It's not his burden to bear, nor will anything actually make a difference. Do I want someone to read this? Yes, anyone out there actually because then I feel like I'm not alone.

Because here's the thing- when you're carrying so much, sometimes it feels like you are alone in this world. Posting a blog about some deeply rooted hurt makes me feel less alone, even if no one reads it, because the truth is, someone out there will find it. I'm not 100% sure where most of this is coming from, but I'm just going to let it keep flowing.

Maybe I'll be able to sleep better tonight-

or Maybe this is the beginning of understanding that my life's work will be about helping people their crosses, and the way I have been dealing with that has not been healthy.

A Step in the right direction?

Or is it a foreshadowing? They say relationships are never 50/50, that they are always 60/40 or 70/30 or 80/20, will I constantly be the 80 side? Will I never find someone who will care about me just as much as I care about them? And I mean both romantically and friendship wise, I have never once denied my friend advice or a shoulder to cry on because it was too much for me, nor will I ever.

Because as much as this blog might sound whiny, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I love people, I will always love people, and most of my life will be about every on else's life coming before my own, and I am glad to do it.

Take care, oh blog readers.

<3