Love- Part V

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Based on my previous 4 posts in which I wrote about the love that Joe and I shared, it should be apparent what types of things are important to me in terms of a love relationship. I realize that not all relationships are the same and different things are important to different people. I in no way claim to be writing definitively what real love is or should be to all people, only what a real love is to me.

When I think about the topic of "love" at this point in my life I am pessimistic. I feel like I will not find someone TWICE IN A LIFETIME who will treat me the way I need to be treated in order to be happy. Someone who will respect me the way Joe did. Someone who will be so open with their feelings of love for me the way he was. Someone who was so outgoing and fun the way he was. Someone who will value time with his wife and children the way he did. Someone who will be tolerant of my intolerance with certain topics (disrespect, lying, talking trash about women, etc). Someone who wants a relationship that is not just mediocre. And the baggage! My God the baggage that someone would have to put up with in a relationship with me---the worry I have that people are going to drop dead at any second.....the desperate feelings I have when people are late, that they've been in an accident......the stress I feel every single time I say goodbye to my kids.....the constant fear that something will happen to me and my kids will have to endure another tragedy, which rips my heart to pieces....the ups and downs of my emotions still as I struggle with grief at times....the feeling of-what's the point to doing it all again when it could be lost in an instant-the knowledge of the pain and the risk that loving again means--am I even capable of loving fully now the way I loved before?.....all the STUFF that makes me who I am at this time in my life.

Ha ha, I just read that last paragraph and I laughed out loud at how awful it sounds. Who is this person and how can I get away from her as soon as possible?!!
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I don't want that paragraph to seem like I don't think I am worthy of love. Despite all of the things I pointed out, I know that for everything about me that someone would have to "put up with" there is an equal or greater benefit in return in what I provide to any person I love.

The beautiful thing is that for all of my pessimism in love I feel, I do also feel hope. When Joe died people kept talking about "hope" and I did not know what they were telling me to hope for, I still don't really. There was NO HOPE in his death, because death is final. There is no hope on earth in death. But with love there is hope. At least I have that. Hope that at some point, whether it is tomorrow, or next year or in 5 years, that I am willing to love as fiercely and openly and meaningfully as I once did. With the knowledge of the pain of what it would feel like to lose it in an instant.

I hope and pray to find it in myself to be BRAVE with respect to love. As brave as I have been in other areas of my life.

Now, I realize that I may be jumping the gun to talk about all of this love stuff. That I need to take things one step at a time and see how it goes. I realize that. So, knowing all the things you know about me and how crazy I am, if you are praying for me to be BRAVE, you should also pray for any man I date. He'll need those prayers, maybe more than me :-)
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