Love Wins

This blog post is about love.
That may seem a little... anticlamactic, perhaps, but at this time in my life where I feel like my toes are on the edge of the cliff, it seems like everything comes back to love.

I went home this weekend for a very short trip to celebrate my niece's first birthday. It was just the perfect length trip for me to see everyone but not really connect again. Especially with my father. I decided to spend saturday night with my cousin because I get to see her less often than my parents, and I also thought that I'd be spending lots of time with my parents the next day at the birthday party. Well, my dad didn't end up going to the birthday party because he recently broke a tooth and is in some pain (which is a whole other ordeal with us not having health insurance because now both of my parents are unemployed). So I saw him for about an hour when I got home Friday night... about an hour on Saturday between errands and when I went to my cousin's... and then today right before heading back to campus. For as complicated as our relationship is, he's still my dad and I still love him to death. Having to turn right around after a day and a half in town was so so so hard. Pulling out of the driveway and having him show me our "I love you" sign made me REALLY not want to come back to school.

The sermon today in church was about love. Not simply the romantic kind of love, but the love of relationships. And I think a big part of what it comes down to is vulnerability. To be close to someone, to have that connection, you must make yourself vulnerable or it will never happen. Some emotion, some event, opens the door where you show the other person 'this is how I'm feeling, this is what's happening, I need help, or I need support'. And every relationship has this mutual Opening of the Vulnerability Door, otherwise the relationship will never grow and evolve. So much of it is an 'i love you, you love me back' feeling that cements the relationship together. Seriously, this is literally a giant billboard from God or the Universe or whatever for EXACTLY what is going on in my life right now.

And that brings me to another thing - the college dating culture. Wait, what college dating culture? MY POINT EXACTLY. Everyone is so into the instant gratification and hooking up is rampant around here. But I don't want to hook up. I want to find someone who will not make me feel so freaking alone. Not that I am lonely, far from it. But sometimes the way my brain works makes me feel like no one really 'gets' me. And wouldn't it be nice to find someone who got me.

Pity, party of one.