Wednesday, April 28, 2010

#22

"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with."

A relationship is a funny thing. You either give yourself completely and wholeheartedly to someone or they slowly take tiny pieces from you over time. At first you don't notice that they're doing this. Never see it at all. But one day you will. Suddenly you'll wake up in the morning or say something in passing and it will hit you. You are gone. Someone has been chipping away at you taking, syphoning small parts of who you are and supplementing the holes with who they think you should be. They never take the ones you'd be better off without either. It's not the sloppiness, the dirty dishes or the refilling the gas tank after you use the car. It's always the "loves", the pieces of the world that can make you happy on their own- little morsels of love and light in the dark. Your personality is the first to be attacked. Whatever characteristics someone else thinks you can live without land on the chopping block.
Discovering this can just about kill you. Having another life leeching off or your own could prove disastrous. After you've removed the parasite from your life you find yourself spending all your time collecting the pieces of yourself lost, fallen to the waist side. It's easy to forget who you once were. Changing for someone you love seems like a great idea at the time. But how are they loving the "real" you if they don't want to be around the "real" you. It's not love- it's possession. There's nothing wrong with changing for someone when it is the bad habits, the messy living, the refilling of the tank. That's change worth doing because it doesn't define you. It's compromise for someone you're sharing your life with. The real you is your politics, your favorite movies, music and books, your friends and opinions. When you've regrouped and collected, you get to know yourself even better than before. Because you are no longer just yourself. You are somehow better because you're the person who you started out as off the bat with a little extra "umph". You'll be strong enough to not allow yourself to be picked apart and smart enough to know when a piece is missing.

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