Dear Love, (Another Collection)

[If you're new here: This is a continuation of an ongoing series on the blog, written to the imagined but maybe someday real person whom I will call Love. The other installments can be found in the Dear Love label, where you should work from the bottom-up for the full (somewhat cringey) saga.]

So Love,

Where are you hiding?

Sincerely,
-Me

Dear Love,

Okay, but for reals? 

Are you on the scary dating apps? On the scary social media somewhere? In the scary public spaces? 

How am I supposed to find you if I'm too anxious for this dating world?? If I knew where you were, I could just go there to find you and not have to risk having to talk to any of the dating horror story bros, maybe?

I've been hoping that you'll just appear in my life, but this strategy does not appear to be working... My world has gotten even smaller since I wrote to you last, and I like it that way, but I'm also not sure that I know how to open it up again.

If you could just do all of the work to bring us together that would be grand, thanks.
-Em

Dear Love,

I'm curious... have you dated? Or, have you been perpetually single like me?

We're old enough now that you could very feasibly have been married and divorced, which is hard to wrap my little meatball around.

I'm not asking because it would be a negative for me, but I wonder sometimes if it would be to you?

Hopefully not,
-Em

Dear Love,

I exist in a dichotomy of thoughts about you.

I wish you were a part of my life, but I'm not sure how to fit you in to it.

Does that make sense? Assuming that you are also in the part of adulthood where you've had to make decisions you thought you would make with a partner but there was no partner so you just made them with only you in mind, how do you think we adjust to fit another person in now? Like, I wish for cuddles, but my bed is a twin bed, and my living room chair is a chair that fits just me... and it's not like I couldn't buy new furniture, but what I'm saying is: I want you here, but I can't envision you existing in the space that I've created for just me. And, imagining leaving this space is equally difficult. It seemed easier when I was younger and had adopted the idea that we'd find each other before age 25 and build the future together. I've started the future without you and I worry that we've built in different directions, you know? There are parts of what I have now that I would be sad to lose in the making of room for you, but also... I would like to make room for you? It's confusing.

I wish that we would have been together already, but also...

Have you seen where all the guys that I've previously crushed on are now?? WHEW! Did I ever dodge several bullets there, eh? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised -- given that my entire pool of gentlemen to crush on in my 20s came from the conservative bible college students who were doing their "field ed" at my church -- that they are all very cringey in their religious and political views to me now!

I don't know how much you've changed, but I certainly have. So I'm glad in some ways that I've had time to finish developing my character, and my relationship skills, and my values, and my mental health before you and I started anything, because I fear that I might have hurt you with what I didn't know yet. But maybe we would have grown and learned together, who knows? This, it turns out, is also confusing.

And then there's the thought that, though -I- think I'm pretty awesome, I worry that you.. won't like me?

This one is silly, I know, but it spins on the little hamster wheel in my head, nonetheless. There are parts of me that aren't my favorite and I'm sorry in advance that you will have to put up with them. Sometimes I think that I'm glad you aren't here to see those parts of me, but maybe that's just a misguided attempt to protect my heart. Not from you! But from missing you, maybe? It hurts to miss you, but somehow I still have to keep doing the life things? And maybe it's easier for my meatball to worry that you'll be disappointed than it is to worry that you'll never be here at all.

It's all a little/lot confusing.

For what it's worth, though, it would be my preference to walk through the difficult parts of making room for you, and to make up for lost time with you, and to work through the messy bits of being vulnerable with you, over the alternative option where I continue on without you. I think.

Not quite enough to try dating apps, but time will tell.

Someday yours, maybe.
-Emmi

I'll write more soonish, hopefully, but it is past midnight and I must sleep now.