what the fuck is it anyway?

love i mean.

is it emotion? action? both? is it supposed to be practical? irrational?

i've known love. we were together once. will we be again?

have i let go of enough love to let more love in? is that why my walls are up to my face in cynicism?

i've been broken. built up. then broken again. and then i put on my big girl panties and took control. or so i thought and just said no. to dating. to men. to possibility of love. then i fell again. so hard i broke my own damn heart. by not following my number one rule... trust yourself. i *knew* it was wrong. from the beginning. but i let myself go because i let my floaty heart take over. and now what?

it hurts to think of being in love again. because my head is forecasting the inevitable. the absolute horror of the broken heart. the one thing you wish would kill you but it never will. it will make you cry. it will make you eat more quarts of ice cream than a grocery store can stock. it will make you ache as if you had actually undergone a triple bypass. but it will never let you out of it's miserable little hands and let you just die of a broken heart. because as some say... this too shall pass.

but does it? if you break a dish... is it ever really the same? you can glue it back together but it still appears to be broken. and if you weren't the one to break it you wonder how it happened. who broke it. and usually you put it away and try to find another that is whole.

am i the broken dish? the beautiful white handcrafted dish with blue handpainted strokes... superglued but never the same. never the original. always put back in the cupboard. treasured, yes. but used? not usually.

i want to feel whole again. not jaded. or pessimistic. not cynical or realistic. not superglued.

not that a man can fix that. but if your heart, the place where your emotions and dreams and goals are stored, is broken. how does it mend? if the very thing that broke it was a man, does a man have to fix it? or do you just "get back in the saddle" and ride again and hope to God that this time... this time the ride will be a success. this time you won't fall off.

there's a saying... "you are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair."

i can't decide if i'm 5 or 65. fear, doubt, despair... these are things i am all too familier with. but my faith, self-confidence, and hope have always driven me to move forward like a child. with reckless abandon they run. but now i have that little voice inside my head that is always saying... "be careful" "watch out" "don't fall" especially in love...