The Girl Of His Dreams

I’ve been thinking tonight about what a fickle thing Love can be. For once I’m not being cynical either. I know love is grand, I know it makes the world go round, I know it has the almighty power to both start and end wars. But at the end of the day, what a fickle thing Love can be.

It hit me tonight quite unexpectedly as I was sifting through the memories I keep safely tucked away in my mind, that I was once the girl of someones dreams. Someone once took weeks to get the courage to nervously ask me out, someone once dreamed of me with the same butterflies in his tummy that I had in mine. He would have smiled at the thought of me, and dropped my name into conversation, just so he could hear my name on his tongue and paired with his. Someone once wrote ‘I Love you’ in the sand for me, etched it in a tree like teenagers, kissed me in the ocean, baked me a cake, bought me flowers, stroked my head when I was sick, cried with me, laughed with me, made Love with me.

As an adult (or the adult I try so hard to be), I realize that sometimes no matter how hard you want something, it doesn’t mean you get to experience the joy of actually getting it. Life’s not always fair, and please don’t take till you are well into your twenties to learn that like I did. Live each moment, enjoy each second………but don’t count on the one person to be there forever, except for yourself. Learnt to love and rely on your self first. Be the person of your own dreams.

I’ve learnt over the years that relationships can come and go, and your thoughts, feelings and the very essence of who you are can change right along with each one. You learn from each other, you stay a little while or you might stay for a long while. You hopefully take the good parts of each other and share them back and forth, making you each better people because of it.

The longer it goes the further you entwine, getting woven into the fabric of each others lives. Amazing then, how one loose thread unravels you all. In what seems like just a heartbeat you go from being the girl of his dreams, to just a girl he used to know.

And that’s what hit me tonight, as I traded polite email from someone who once had me so far on a pedestal that I must have got giddy from the height. Looking back I was bound to fall eventually. This man had once idolised me, and had once thought I was one of the greatest things to ever happen to him, who told me I opened up his way of thinking and made things seems new and exciting. He used to laugh at the way the most mundane things in our lives became funny with my storytelling, he would touch me on the back when we were standing in a line, just to remind me he was there, and to feel that spark again as our skin touched. Yes, I was once the girl of his every dream and fantasy……. and now? Now I’m not. Now I’m a mere number amongst the contact list on his mobile phone.

Maybe it’s just me cause I’m finding that all too hard to fathom out this evening.

It’s not the break up I regret. People change all the time, I changed. Looking back I changed far more than him. I may have been changing for the better, but I was no longer the girl he fell in love with, and that’s where the thread became loose, and our tapestry of life start unraveling till we couldn’t recognize what we had even made, nor even a recognize the pattern for us to start again.

That’s the thing about love you see, its human nature to change and if we don’t allow our partners to do the same, if we insist that they be the exact person we fell in love with ……..then nothing can grow. We stagnate. We stop being amazed, stop being the best things that can ever happen to anyone. Stop being the girls of their dreams..

For once in my life I see the excitement before me, the roads I have yet to travel, the songs still to be sung, beaches I’ve yet to sit on a dawn, lovers I’ve yet to meet. So much ahead of me. I no longer miss him, or ache for him in anyway. I just feel a sadness, a sorrow that love can make fools of even the wisest. That we can declare someone the love of our lives, when we haven’t even lived our full lives. That we can be someones everything for a while, and when that ‘while’ is over …you are a nothing. A number in a phone perhaps , a forwarding address on the email list. A face in the crowd you might wave hello too then guiltily look away.

I can only trust my judgment that I haven’t gotten it wrong so far, and I was right to hold out. Hold out for the good stuff.

I used to think I would know what he would be like and look like when he came along, this mystery man of mine. I couldn’t tell you any of it now. I have loved and laughed with the tall and short, the underweight and overweight, blonde hair and darkhair, suits and truckdrivers, all different but who have caught my eye and my attention in some way. I thought I had a type, but it turns out I don’t have one after all. I guess when he comes along......the right one, he will just be the right type for me.

I have had my heart broken along this rocky path of love already, and I fear I have broken someone elses too as I passed them by.

Love is indeed a fickle thing.

I wish you all the love in the world tonight, just take it and treat it kindly..