Real Love (Revisited)

Today I went to a friend's birthday "Girlfriend's" Spa Day Party. While it was great fun, it was weird being the "single" one. The one who had no "my husband and I" stories. That and Belle's post about A & B Connections with individuals reminded be about this post I had written a couple of years ago. While me and the individual in question are once again in limbo, the sentiments about what I am looking for still ring true--and did even more so amongst all of the wifeys I was with today.

Original Post Date: Monday, September 26, 2005, 7:44:00 PM

I am someone looking for love. Real love...ridiculous...inconvenient...consuming...
can't live without each other love. --Carrie Bradshaw, "Sex and the City

Fans of "Sex and the City" will recognize these words from Carrie as she told "the Russian" that she was looking for love, not just the thrill of being in Paris. When I first heard them, I made sure that I taped the re-run later in the week so I could get them exactly right. Because regardless of anything else going on in the world with me, I am a woman looking for love.

Given all the talk about Soul Ties lately in the parts of the blogsphere that I visit frequently, I have been wondering about myself and my connection to this one individual in particular. I do believe that on a friendship level, our souls are tied to each other. For six years now, we have grown, broken apart, come back together, and know each other better than a lot of folks who claim to know each of us. We've had individuals try and come between our friendship for the silliest of reasons. And still...here we are, rooting for our Jets, laughing at the ridiculousness
that is both of our workplaces, and just being comfortable and safe around each other.

And that is what gets me and worries me. I am very comfortable in the little gray area that we have established for ourselves, but still...I want more. Not necessarily from HIM, but I am looking for more. I want to be able to have and share what we share, but I also want to be able to share an "I love you" at the end of those late night/early morning phone conversations. I
want to "cater" to my special guy...do the little things that mean so much for someone I love and have the security in knowing loves me back.

I am not fooling myself into believing that just because he says that we could end up together one day that it is going to happen. One day could be tomorrow...one day could be when we are both 90 sitting in a nursing home somewhere. And what exactly does, "Whether it's me or some other man, you are going to make whoever will be your husband a very happy, blessed and lucky man" mean? *rollin em*

*singing* "I gotta shake you off...cuz you keep on playing games like you know I'm here to stay..."

I understand where SJP's character was coming from in that final season. Love *is* inconvenient. It sometimes means doing something for the one you love at the neglect of something that you may want to do for yourself every so often...from something as simple as giving up the TV remote for the night to going to that important function to just listening when you want to be doing anything else but hearing the hurt in the words that the one you love is pouring out to you. Love *is* consuming. When you are in love, everything else seems to be so much brighter when everything is going well and so much darker when everything is on the rocks. Going through the daily grind isn't half as bad as it could be when you are loving somebody and that somebody loves you back. Even when the arguments are heated and long, there is so much beauty in being able to agree to disagree and make up. Love *is* ridiculous. Sometimes it just doesn't make any sense how happy it can make you, how sad it can make you when you are apart, how crazy you two can both look to someone on the outside looking in because they don't get the inside jokes, the stolen glances that mean so much more than anyone else could ever know. And while I wouldn't go as far as to say that my life would be "purposeless" without the special man in my life a la Destiny's Child, I do believe that when you are with that special love of your life, you do feel like your life has so much more meaning because they are a part of it. You of course will always be you, but you do consciously set out to not only make yourself proud, but make that person proud as well. It's not looking for their approval, so much as it is knowing that they have your back, regardless.

It is real. And it is what I am looking for. I don't want to just be a safety net because you know I won't hurt you. I don't want to "end up" with you a la Jagged Edge ("We ain't getting no younger so we might as well do it" my fat behind. Hell to the no). If you are going to be my man, and call me your woman, I want it to be because you love me. Simple, isn't it? Because I make you happy. Because you trust me fully and completely.

Because that is what I would have to feel for you for me to want to be with you. It's not rocket science. At the end of the day, it is the most complex, yet the most innocent emotion in the world.

"you see I'm searching for a real love but I don't know where to go/been around the world and high and low and still i've never known/how it feels to have a real love cuz there seems there's none around/gotta end it in this way because it seems he can't be found...."
--Mary J. Blige "Real Love"