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“I will not date you if I meet you in the club. It’s never going to happen. If I meet you in a book store, or a coffee shop, or somewhere of equal value, then you’re probably my type and I would probably say yes to a date with you”-Early November, 2012

I find this so incredibly ironic, because I now happen to find myself in love with a boy who I met at a club. I suppose you really should “never say never”. People will constantly surprise us. They will constantly motivate us and change us and impact us. No one deserves a label based on one little thing. Does this necessarily mean that every guy who attempts to dance with you at a club also carries all the qualities of a boy you dream about meeting in a more “romantic” place? Not at all. Is it safe to usually assume they’re just looking for some action? Absolutely. Just never forget that people are able to change your mind at a moments notice. 

P.s- The boy who I met at the club also happens to be intelligent, kind, and one of the most driven people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. He likes to watch movies with me on the couch as I fall asleep, and lay in bed listening to me talk for hours when we wake up. It would have been one of the most regrettable things in my life to have brushed him off simply because he was at a place where he could enjoy being with his friends and having fun. 

Speaking of this person, I as read through my old posts, I find a lot covering a topic that I felt so passionately about in the fall and winter. It was this idea of staying true to yourself and waiting until you met someone who you felt was “perfect” to settle for any type of relationship. That it was more important to focus on becoming the person you wanted to be, than to focus on molding yourself into an idea of what someone else excepted. While I spent time working through these thoughts in my head, and putting them into words on my blog, I didn’t actually know if the idea would hold true for myself in real life. I thought it was possible that I would end up meeting someone and settling for the same things as before simply because they were cute and said nice things. However, I now find myself involved with someone who I care very deeply about. In fact, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that I love him. Although I knew that he made me happier than anyone has before, and that I feel very safe and respected in our relationship, it wasn’t until I began going through this blog that I realized I had taken my own words of advice so well. 

Perhaps I just got lucky, and the boy that I meets so many things that I was looking for so well by accident. But now looking at my own words, I feel that I was able to change my mindset completely and become a picture of what I believe in. 

Here is some of my writing from November and December:

“But what do you do when you find someone you actually want to be with? Not someone who you look at, and try to figure out which things you’ll focus on and which things you’ll pretend are not there. What happens when you want someone 100% for who they are. For the stupid faces they make, and the way they dance, and their voice when they’re drunk. What happens when you genuinely fall for someone’s flaws, insecurities, imperfections. When it’s not about what they look like. It’s about the actual goddamn person that they are. What happens when you can’t convince yourself of any reason as to why you shouldn’t be head over heels for them? “

“I need someone who can keep up with me. Someone who can go out on some nights, not cling to my side but be open and friendly with everyone in the room. Someone who gets to know the people in my life and earn their respect. But I also need someone who can spend quiet nights at home with me. Curled up in sweatpants, reading good books and drinking tea. That’s who I am. I wouldn’t be happy unless the person I was with was the same. I’ve determined that there are two completely opposite sides to me. I need someone who can appreciate those two sides. Someone who doesn’t feel the need to constantly party, every single night of every weekend. But also someone who doesn’t feel the need to only stay home. That’s what I need.”

“I honestly feel like we all have this image in our head of our absolute perfect significant other. And I feel like a lot of the time we settle for something that doesn’t fit that description. But I feel like there’s billions of people in this world, and that a “perfect” person really is out there. I don’t want to settle just because I’m single. ”

As I sat in a play last November, I watched couples coming in for the show and noticed how most of the time they looked so unhappy with each other. I started to wonder why people end up in the relationships they have, if they’re only going to walk around looking miserable all the time. I figured it came back to this idea that people settle. That although they have this idea of the right person in their head, they’ll go for anyone who starts a relationship off by inflating their egos. I decided that instead of risking any future relationships by just settling, that I would write down exactly what I had hoped to find in someone. Down to every stupid little detail. However, soon after I wrote it, I forgot about it. In fact, the only thing I remember was that I had in fact wrote it, some long time ago. In the mean time, I met someone and began falling for them. As I waited for a bus one day to go and visit him, I thought back to the post and decided to look at it to see if I had ended up with someone similar to the person I had originally thought about. It honestly scared me a bit by how similar he is compared to the fictional one I had wrote about. Here is part of the original post. I changed absolutely nothing about it, except for a few very specific bits that weren’t relevant. 

“He’s a bit taller then me. Not towering, but has a couple of inches. He isn’t real skinny. Average. He likes to run and work out, but not to the point of huge muscles. Just does it because he likes being healthy. He has light brown hair and nice eyes. The color isn’t a huge factor.  His smell is all his own and it stays on my sweaters and pillows when he leaves. He dresses nicely. Sweaters and v-necks and jackets. He listens to music a lot. He likes to read. He can cook. He’s close to his family, he has a few close friends. He’s a hard worker. He takes things seriously when he needs to. He makes me laugh. He doesn’t pick apart the things that I do wrong. He smiles when I do things well. He’s encouraging. He’s not loud when we’re out in public. He’s friendly, but not overbearing.  He likes hugs. He wears sweatpants when he gets home from work. He likes to curl up on the couch and watch movies. On the weekends we’d go out. He likes to dance, he likes to eat, he likes to socialize.  He holds my hand. He gets goofy when he’s sleepy. He wants me, for me”

I have to say that I find it strange to come back to this blog after so long. No need to seem morbid, but it’s almost like returning to a home after the person living in it has suddenly passed away. Everything is exactly where they left it, almost like time has remained the same since they last turned out the lights and shut the front door. Reading through my last few posts takes me back to my exact mind set of when I wrote them. I can picture those last winter nights in Michigan perfectly. Me, curled up in my chilly bedroom, sipping Earl Grey tea and huddled under blankets as I blogged into the early hours of each morning. On my floor is probably piles of my belongings as I slowly packed them away to send to Florida. The door is  locked, purposely, to keep my mother and another unwanted house guest out of my space. 

As a scroll deeper and deeper into this blog I feel as though I’m reading the writing of several different people, and not just one me. Prior to my most recent posts that are full of thought out writings on love and life, are posts coming from a very broken girl. it’s almost painful to look back on what was going through my mind last summer. The happiness I felt was shallow and destructive. I was hurt and confused by myself and everyone in my life. I felt abandoned. I was so angry at someone for lashing out at me, and even more angry at myself for hurting him in the way that I did to deserve his reaction. I let myself be used and let the wrong people put their hands on me. Thinking back to those July nights turns my stomach and if I allowed myself to think about it for too long, I would convince myself that I never deserve to have anyone love me.

Following those summer posts, my change in my approach to life is so drastically different that I feel disconnected from my self from the summer. It’s almost like I went into hibernation from my mind. I took those fall months to remind myself of who I actually wanted to become and stopped myself from the person that I was becoming. On the weekends, instead of drinking and wasting myself in front of people who simply took advantage of it, I spent them in bed with tea and homework and good music. As it got colder, my mind got clearer, and my heart focused on figuring out exactly what it deserved. I became comfortable with the idea of being alone because it meant becoming the person I wanted someone to love one day. I mentally feel as though I accomplished so much in those months. It could potentially be scary to think about where my life would be now if I hadn’t turned it around. 

I think this comes back to the idea that everything happens for a reason. That people are brought into our lives and leave us in order for the paths we were meant to be on to go the right way. We think that we have all of the answers, that we are happy with what we have right this current minutes, yet when you look at the bigger picture you realize that life would not have been the same if they had stayed. Although I felt pain when someone left me last summer, I know that if he hadn’t, I may have never come to Florida. I would cry a lot more than I do now and would probably still spend my weekends drinking and becoming more and more ashamed of the things i was allowing myself to do. 

This post has become one of rambling nonsense. i have 4 months of thoughts and concepts in my head that I haven’t been able to put into words yet. Since I’m able to once again access this blog I hope to write plenty more about what I’ve learned since leaving home in the days to come.