"the matter of love"

It's been a long time since I've had a crush. I'd like to say I've outgrown a faze, but it's really taken some effort on my part to not be infatuated with someone. It's taken a sort of transference of feeling, a transference of love, if you could call it love. That somewhat false love is displaced on most everything except the things that really matter-well, the things I think should matter to me at this point in my life. Focused on things like inanimate objects, abstract ideas/ideals/desires. There should be enough of it to go around, but it seems the older I get the stingier I am. I'm a cheapskate with my affections, and I don't know if I want to change. Maybe it's that I don't know if I actually can change.

What I do know now that I'm a little bit older, and have a teensy bit more wisdom than when I was, say, 12 years old (*wink*), is that I really can't expect too much. I mean, I haven't earned real love; I haven't earned being able to give or recieve it because I'm not showing all my cards. I always hold a bit of myself back, that's the way it is with the women in my family (I know, what a convenient excuse that is), for many reasons, but especially for fear of being hurt. But that doesn't stop me from being disappointed and discouraged whenever my feelings are unrequited. And it doesn't stop me from expecting way too much from people...And the more I think about it, the more desperate I get to change my attitude and outlook. The more I think that I'm not getting what I need out of life because of the way I choose to operate it. Because I feel life's like a machine that could, in fact, be "operated"..But let's get back to the matter of love now.

I wouldn't say I'm down on love, but I've lost some of the hopefullness I had when I was younger. At the same time, I'm a romantic type-I feel there is that special person for me (although I subscribe to the idea that there could be more than one). A hopeless romantic is not a novel, or fresh idea, but I'll add another character quirk to the list: You might not have guessed it but...I'm cynical! That cyniscism beats down my over-expectation (adding to the hopelessness), and supposedly keeps me somewhat level. That cyniscism is starting to get tiring now, but it's like an old friend you just can't dump. Because that friend knows, just like you know, how things really are: That the world's a dangerous, lonely, and unfair place, and love just makes it more so. At the same time there is this profound sense of missing out on something, on missing the point of certain things, like I'm a child again wanting badly to understand things which pass just out of my mind's reach. At times it's comforting not to be apart of this game, to pretend to be "beyond it", but more often it isolates me when I just want to burst out and be free. Once again, I'm stuck fighting myself, when there are much bigger issues at hand.

You know I recieve so much love that I'm just coming apart at the seams with it, it's just knowing that I'm worthy of it that keeps me underground. In my little cave. Pushing love away. I wonder now what would happen if I were to let a little of it leak in...

But I'm not out of the loop yet, I'm still grasping at life-and I still want to fight for love. Deep inside I think I could deserve it one day. And I'm going to try my darndest to get it.