Why I'm Dating That Guy With Green Hair (or Love, the Receiving End)

" I guess it's true that love is all you wanted/ cause you're giving it away like it's extra change/ hoping it'll end up in his pocket/ but he leaves you out like a penny in the rain..." ~Taylor Swift (yes, Taylor Swift is in my philosophical reflective post; sorry not sorry.)

I started dating for the first time this past December.  The best word I can think of to describe it is: surprising. And no, that's not just because my boyfriend does things like dye his hair the color of the ocean or randomly buy me a HUGE bag of Reese's peanut butter eggs (...in the middle of Lent. Luckily I didn't give up chocolate this year. Besides, it's the thought that counts, right?) It's because dating is nothing like I thought it would be. We go on dates sometimes and we love each other, but other than that I can't say it matches my expectations.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that sometimes dating makes me feel terrible.  Not my boyfriend. Dating.  My boyfriend is a kind and awesome person who tries very hard to make me happy.  That is why sometimes, I feel like a terrible person.  Because often, I am not happy at all and my non-happiness no longer affects only me.

I am grumpy, irrational, and negative. I am irresponsible.  I am impatient.  I am anxious.  I am afraid.

He worries about me.

Kyle wants me to stop being so hard on myself.  He knows I need to take care of myself and he tries to take care of me, too.  And it's honestly confusing for me.  I am still unused to the phone calls where I can talk about and work through my anxieties, the offer of hugs or even a shoulder to cry on after a long day, the amused toleration of my grumpiness, messy hair, and weird food choices (why am I randomly obsessed with applesauce? nobody knows.) Sure, I do nice things for him just like I try to do nice things for everybody, but why would he pick me? 

People tell you often that loving the right person will bring out the best in you, and I think it's true.  My boyfriend doubles my enthusiasm, my goofiness, and my sense of accomplishment.  I also think he brings out the worst in me, which isn't really something people warn you about.  The truth is, trying to communicate and cooperate with another human being on a daily basis pretty much puts all your flaws you might be vaguely aware of (or avoiding completely) under a microscope.  I have a lot of issues.  Sometimes I'm tempted to call things off between us just because I'm so discouraged by my imperfections and worry they will discourage him, too.  I want him to be happy and I feel like I get in the way even if he denies it.

It's in my nature. I take care of people.  I have five younger siblings.  I have a lot of friends who come to me for advice because they're the kind of introverts who don't do the whole "feelings" thing or because they trust my empathy.  I have students now who rely on me to teach them.  There are younger girls at my church who look up to me.  So I take care of people, dang it.  I took the "it is in giving that we receive" part of that Saint Francis prayer to heart and gave away love like extra change, hoping it'd come back in my direction eventually but assuming it was only fair if it didn't. And when I felt I hadn't earned it, I pushed it away because I couldn't love myself enough to accept it.  I feel sometimes like I owe the world the straight A's, the service in my parish, the things that got me labeled "good".  Good example, good girl, good job.  In my mind, my worth depended on these things that I did and how well I did them.

I have become someone I can be proud of, but not always someone I can love.   Pride does not mean loving yourself.  Pride and love are two entirely different things, and pride has me trying to win the world record for perfectionist people pleaser.  I question whether I deserve to be loved, supported, and forgiven so much and so often-- in spite of the fact that I have learned to love, support, and forgive others. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of "deserving" anything, actually.  I didn't even have to exist; my whole life is a gift to me, so my whole life should be a gift back to the world. I do this to such an extreme that I almost threw myself under the bus and didn't date Kyle because I didn't know if my family and friends would like him as much as I do.  I do this to such an extreme that I still feel that it is a challenge for me to believe God loves me.  Unless I'm perfect, and I never am. 

I have tried so hard to give love, that I forgot how to receive it.

Until I started falling for someone who only tried harder after every mistake he made, who forgave himself, who actually believed me when I told him how amazing he was.  He has grown so much in confidence and accomplished so much just in the short amount of time we've been dating.  And I find the way he embraces being human and imperfect so inspiring.  Even better, he loves me whether I think I deserve it or not, just like they always told me God does. He's helping me understand one of the major flaws in the way I imagine God, and helping me heal it. 

God is okay with me being weak and imperfect like a little child.  He is happy when I get it right, and he cries with me when I get it wrong, and he holds me either way.  God doesn't expect me to drain myself giving away love that I don't have.  He's returning his own love to me so that I have a home to come back to when it hurts to love others.  He is teaching me, with the help of an amazing person who cares about me, that love is incomplete until it is returned. 

The scariest, most vulnerable part of love isn't throwing yourself under the bus and letting yourself break for others.  It's letting them come inside your heart to help you put yourself back together when you're a mess.  It requires admitting you are not always the capable person you want to be.  And it requires forgiving yourself and letting yourself be happy anyway.

I've decided it's worth a try. 

The Trouble With Love

Every love is as unique and unrepeatable as the person it is given to.
Heartbreak has been on my mind a lot lately because of a few friends who I care very deeply about and their recent life experiences. This is dedicated to them.

The trouble with love is that you can never repeat it. Tell someone that there are plenty of fish in the sea and expect to receive nothing but tears, ice-cold glares that could kill, or both. It's not a comforting response because they know that love isn't a little award that they can hold auditions for, passing on the trophy of their heart to whoever performs the best at the time. It's not an emotion they can just turn on and off, or grow out of, or experience in phases. Love is unscientific, and we can't and shouldn't take it lightly, or expect to be able to solve or cure it. Love is a choice, a choice that has already been made. And true love (or unconditional love) is an irreversible choice. It's one I would never criticize anyone for making. Maybe you think the dreaded ex was unworthy of a love that deep or powerful. I might agree with you. But I think I'm unworthy of it too. No one truly deserves to be loved entirely just as they are with all their flaws. The beauty of love is that it is given in spite of the fact that we don't deserve it. That's why trust and love are so closely connected. When someone loves you, you can be your imperfect self because they're not about keeping score and making you earn it. They just do it.

And if somebody really loves you like that, I don't think they ever stop.

But they might stop belonging with you. Breakups happen, friends move away or lose touch, people die. Sometimes we understand the reasons and sometimes we don't. Either way, we usually don't care. None of the reasons seem as important as that irreversible love we decided to risk for that person. It's too late to go back so excuses don't help. Nobody is more stubborn than a person with a broken heart. Everything looks empty compared to the love they lost. All possible alternatives whether present or future dull in comparison. They simply don't want to stop loving the person they love. And frankly, I don't think they should.

No, I'm not saying it's healthy to live in the past. I'm not saying "get over it" isn't valid advice. But I think we need to acknowledge that it's ok to keep loving somebody after you lose them, because love is not a limited resource. It is not possible to run out of love. When we love people, we don't go around tearing off little pieces of our hearts and handing them to others  until we just run out. The idea is so absurd (although unfortunately rather popular). No, once you love someone you realize that love is more specialized than that. It's something you build and learn together, a permanent monument that you can look back on for the rest of your life. And you never build the exact same thing twice. And that's ok.

One of my friends said it best when he told me "I have too much love to give to just one person." I think that's beautiful, and true of all of us.  We aren't diminished when we increase our love. No, love makes us grow, and love multiplies itself. I've had a couple of friends think, and sort of tell me, that they could never love again. I felt that loss and pain with them. But looking back, I smile because I realize they were proving themselves wrong with those seemingly hopeless conversations. They were loving again; loving me, building our friendships by sharing those dark experiences and trusting me to be there for them. "That's different," you say. Precisely. Of course it's different. And every other love they ever find from now on will be different. That's a good thing. Different loves mean different lessons, different discoveries, different adventures. It means that it's possible for us to grow and change and heal as people.  I wouldn't want the same love over again every time. It would ruin the specialness of those loves from my past that I still treasure even if I didn't get to stay with those people. And it would ruin the excitement and newness of my delightfully unpredictable future. Because love is new and different every time, I can believe that someday I will be a better person than I can imagine right now.

Besides, there is no need to threaten that which does not threaten you. Continuing to love someone you lost will never hurt your future because love is non-transferable. It can not be stolen, just as people can not be replaced.  Attention may come and go from one person to the next, but love is steadfast. It can't be corrupted like the emotions that we sometimes confuse with it. It endures all things.  And when the time comes to love again, how much better it is to look back and say you still want the best for those in your past, rather than trying to manufacture bitterness towards them.  No, moving on is not forgetting, or reaching a point where you don't care anymore.  Moving on is when you realize the best way to love someone is to want their freedom and their happiness, even if you can't be with them while they taste it.  So in a sense, letting go of someone is the final proof of your love for them.  It's not an easy test to pass, but it's an important one.

Real love takes sacrifice.  It's hard to find and impossible to repeat.  It can be extremely painful.  And yet somehow, I believe it's worth every bit of the trouble.

Confessions of a Catholic College Student

My dear readers,

I am not ok.  
I am weak.
I am imperfect.
And, I can't fix it.

I guess you could say I'm failing.  Because despite the above average GPA, the volunteering, the blog, (which has surpassed the 1,300 pageview milestone!)  and the smiles for everyone that are so natural they've become my default,  I have realized that Westley from The Princess Bride was right: "Life is pain, Highness.  Anyone who says differently is selling something."  Well...maybe that's the melancholic in me talking, but there are days when I agree with the Man in Black wholeheartedly.  There are so many people around me hurting, and as hard as try, I am less than enough to heal them.  Maybe that's because I haven't healed myself or fixed my own messes:  the cowardice, the impatience, the laziness...and to top it all off, the perfectionism. The one that makes all the other ones worse.  The one that tortures me because I don't have my life together and am almost clueless about where it's going. 

It's not exactly a secret that I'm Catholic.  I have chosen a faith that gives me a clear standard to live up to, and I constantly fall short of it.  I'm also the "big sister,"  the role model not only for my own siblings but for a lot of the younger girls at my church.  I'm the straight A student.  And I'm the friend that everyone at my college calls "innocent."  No pressure at all. 

Innocent.

I don't feel innocent.  I know that  I'm more like them than they realize.  We're all just looking for enough truth and purpose to back up our chaotic lives, and we're making plenty of mistakes along the way.  If anything, I am the least innocent because I have been shown a way that is good, and I throw it away deliberately.  I don't have the excuse of uncertainty that they do.  They are sincerely still searching and asking questions.  I have knowledge of good and evil, and yet I've fallen for the oldest trick in the book: the one where the serpent whispers "You will be like God,"  and I take matters into my own hands to make it happen.  And I do this all under the pretense of holiness, of earning my place in God's heart.  I try so very hard to look like I'm exemplary.  Now it's time for me to be vulnerable.  I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned.  I have failed.  And I have beat myself up about it, too. 

See, I thought I was supposed to form myself into this indestructible force to be reckoned with.  I thought that's what Christianity was about.  I thought claiming to belong to God meant that I had to strive for an ideal, when really it's about striving to encounter a person. I thought I was supposed to be like God, but I'm actually just supposed to be united to God.  I thought I had to prove to the world that my faith was effective by becoming perfect, or close to it.

Well, turns out St. Paul is a killjoy and burst my bubble: "But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."  (2 Corinthians 12:9)

....Yeah.  That's right.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Sarah. (Cause St.  Paul would totally just be sassy with me like that.)  

For me or for anyone else to see the power of God, I have to accept that I am human.  I am not innocent.  I struggle all the time.  I experience pain just like everyone else, and I have to face my doubts and my temptations.  I am not sufficient for myself; that's His grace's job.  My weakness makes room for Him to be strong.  My humanity is an opportunity for me to meet God who I need so desperately to help deal with all this crazy life stuff.  The times I mess up are the times He gets to prove that He is merciful.  And above all, He loves me whether I've earned it or not.  

I still can't fix things.  I still don't really understand why my friends have to endure suffering, why I have to suffer, too.  I still get the urge to attempt to be god-like on my own instead of tapping into the love and power of the real deal.  He has to comfort me in the middle of the night when I realize I don't know what to do and I'm trying to be a false light to myself or to my friends.  Lucky for me, He knows how to suffer, how to feel abandoned, how to wish your burden would be taken away, and how to fix things when they look like Hell.  He knows how to win when all I do is fail. 

 I guess this is ultimately a love letter.  I love everyone who is not perfect.  I love the failures.  I love the ones who try to be innocent and the ones who have lost hope and given up on it.  I love brokenness, because it reminds me of the Healer...and Him I love most of all.  I love that what I see as a flaw, something to be condemned, He sees as a door, a place where we are vulnerable enough for Him to come in and love us with all His heart.  You don't have to be afraid to admit to the world you're not good enough.  He loves you anyway, and so do I.

~Sarah M.