Falling in love with love...

Well this evening has made me very introspective so settle in...I will attempt to be brief, but will probably fail.

I want to be in love.

And I hate that I want it so badly.

I am a hopeless romantic. And I have been for as long as I can remember. It is a hallmark of who I am. I blame it on all of those viewings of Cinderella as a kid (and maybe as an adult...).

My childhood was filled with Disney princesses falling in love, Maria finding the Captain, Eliza finding Higgins, Esther Smith finding John Truitt. Then when I got older Meg Ryan found Tom Hanks on top of The Empire State Building AND in Central Park. Julia Roberts found Richard Gere, Holly Golightly found George. (I know I am mixing characters and actor names...I don't care.)

I fell in love with my female friends starting in seventh grade. And I didn't stop for two years. Middle school was tumultuous to say the least. Then at the beginning of high school I thought maybe love wasn't for me. I was going to be that cynical, single guy; the one that hated kids and just had a fabulous life with fabulous friends. I was going to write for the New York Times or dance and sing on Broadway. I didn't need love.

Then I fell in love...my junior year of high school. And it was head over heels, deep head spinning love. And it was with a boy. (I know I have shocked you all!) And we loved each other and it was forbidden and it was real and true. And intoxicating. And it lasted for three years. And it was great until it wasn't.

And after that I wanted to be free and experience college the way I had seen others do and they way I thought I was supposed to. I wanted to be over him, but I didn't want to love someone else yet. It just didn't enter my mind, I think. Maybe it did and I have blocked it out.

Then I fell in love...again. And it was everything my first relationship wasn't. And it was unexpected, and it was so simple and unromantic (there was lots of romance, but not that whole tortured romance bullshit.) We thrived. He did things for me that no one ever could. He was there for me through tough things. I was there for him. We had created a community and a legacy.

 And then we got engaged...I wanted to marry him from the moment I knew I loved him. And I would have too, but I was still in college and I was still in the closet with my family. But we were going to last forever. I graduated. I "came out." I proposed. And I didn't regret it then. I loved him and thought forever was us. Cut to almost a year later...when one night sitting on the steps outside the New York Public Library on the phone with my best friend I realized that forever was not in the cards for us. And in the three and a half years we had been together that thought never once entered my mind.

"I don't think two people could have been happier than we've been."
    -The Hours

I am a hopeless romantic, but I am also a skeptic. I do not suffer from delusions. I never have and probably never will. I just have been so blessed in my life. I know the power of love firsthand.

I am twenty-three and am single in New York City...like so many others. And I had never had to do the grown-up dating thing. But now I am doing it. I feel like a veteran. Because it sucks. And I'm good at it. I am not ashamed to say...but it still sucks.

After my engagement ended (I hate saying that, because now for the rest of my life I will have always been engaged.) I was looking around for the next person to disappear into. I walked lonely down the streets calling out for him. I was Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love divorcing Billy Crudup and diving into James Franco. And I had no idea.

Then it happened briefly...or at least I tried to make it happen. And boy was that a dumb idea. I suffered the consequences.

But I'm still here. I'm standing strong.

All of this stems from an evening with a friend who was down because of a breakup. Which lead me to share things that I hadn't looked at too closely in awhile. So now I am unpacking them I guess. He said that he fears he is incapable of love (you are capable). And we all think that at some point.

As P!ink says, "We're not broken, just bent. We can learn to love again."

I know that I will find the man of my dreams and we will have beautiful children and a beautiful life together.

I know I am supposed to stop looking for love, because that is when it will find me...blah blah blah. I know that I am simply not able to give anyone else what they need right now. Because I am figuring out what I need to give myself.

Romantic comedies may have ruined me a bit...and a lot of America. But am I still going to fall asleep to Sleepless in Seattle tonight? Probably...

Now I need to figure out how to get back into my OkCupid account, because I think it locked me out...