The Berlin Wall of My Heart

I don't believe in love anymore. Not for me anyway. Not in the romantic sense.

Yet I can't help but wonder, if I get my heart broken, does that mean I'm closer to finding true love? Am I just getting closer to the real deal? The real deal cold steel?

I'm hurt. My heart is broken. I want to put a wall back up around my heart. To protect myself. To make sure I am never hurt again.

Yet, as much as I tell myself I'm doomed to be a spinster the rest of my life - that not everyone is lucky enough to experience romantic love with the same person for years and years, there's this little nugget of hope inside - that I will find love.

It's torture. Why do I do it? Am I just fooling myself into thinking I'll find love, in order to keep my spirits up? Will the day come round, when I look in the mirror and my youth has left me? Will I look in the mirror and see a shrunken, gray haired, wrinkled woman and realize that I had fooled myself all along - because I'm still alone?

People tell me not to worry about it. It'll happen when you're least expecting it. Well I guess it hasn't happened yet. Instead I've run into the boys that are no good for me. There's no one to blame but myself. I know. I accept responsibility for my actions. I accept the consequences and all that good stuff. But I want to make it better. I want to build that wall up - but still I can't even fool myself. Why? I tell myself I'll build the wall back up. I also tell myself that the right one will come along and break the wall back down. And then I'll know it's true love. Because he'll be the only one who can get to my heart.

It's so hard. But I'll survive. No one ever died from a broken heart, right. Yet it feels like you're dying, doesn't it? Your senses are out of sync, you can't eat, you can't sleep. Lovesick. But you've been through it before. You know you will continue to breathe.

One of my friends told me I'm a hopeless romantic with very certain ideals and expectations on what a relationship is supposed to look like. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. You're not supposed to settle. God forbid - you never want to settle. And I actually buy that. I'm not an idiot. I don't want to be with someone just to be with someone. If he's not what I want, if he doesn't treat me right, etc. I'm not going to settle. You want to set certain standards. But you don't want to expect someone to be perfect. No one is perfect including yourself. You know this. You accept this. So where do the lines cross and become blurry? At what point, do I get too much into fantasy and fairy tales about love and relationships?

Well I guess I'll build that wall back up, the Berlin Wall of my heart, and see if I fare any better in the arena of love. I'll be more discriminating, more scrutinizing. I'll set the bar high, but be open to what the universe throws to me. I'll still call out to my soul-mate though. I still can't let go the notion of true love. I'm stubborn. I'm a dreamer. And maybe my fantasies and fairy tales are good fodder for my writing, but I can't let go. If I can't dream, then what's the point?