Love is a Losing Game

by Amy Winehouse from Back in Black

Welcome to my first post of 2010. Unfortunately, my new year started out pretty terribly. The special lady and I broke up. Or more accurately, the special lady broke up with me. And since a relationship usually requires two people to agree to it, only takes one person to end it. I would like to say that there is some well defined and uber-important reason why but like so many things in life, its complicated. To best thing I can say is that it just didn't work out. There were several reasons, some minor, some of them major, but in the end, we couldn't work them out - even though I thought we could have. Hence she breaking up with me, and not the other way around. I am definitely a person who believes that relationships require constant work, nothing truly meaningful comes easily. I don't believe in "the one", namely that magical person you automatically click with and fall deliriously and effortlessly in love with it. It just doesn't happen in real life. Its my opinion that too many people are of the "the one" camp, who apparently believe that a relationship that works shouldn't be that much effort to make work or else something is wrong. I don't want to mischaracterize the special lady in this regard (she is a great person and I wish her the best), but on this fundamental issue we disagreed. It's not all her fault, nor it is all my fault, nor is it all circumstances' fault, nor is it fate. It just a mixed up collection of various reasons that partly mine, partly hers, partly circumstances, and the rest just the unknown nature of human emotion.

So how am I holding up. I won't lie, I feel like shit most of the time. Now just like the person who says getting fired from a ill-fitting job was the best thing that happened to them, there are people out there who would say look at the bright side. I would reply to them, in probably a non-polite manner, that they probably have never been dumped nor fired so they should probably shut the fuck up. I have been mostly going about my normal routine, trying to fill up the void left in my life that used to be occupied by the special lady. I have been avoiding going out to eat since it is just too painful to eat alone. On Friday and Saturday night, which were usually spent with the special lady, I sit around my apartment watching TV or surfing online since yeah what else is there to do. As of now, I have been thinking of ways to occupy the time that is now freed. I decided that I have no excuse not to train for the half-marathon and marathons I am planning on running. I signed up to volunteer next Saturday morning. I have been throwing some ideas like taking a vacation somewhere like climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro or maybe taking some classes. But yeah just thoughts of a mind that doesn't know what to step I should take next. So yeah, I am in that self-pitying breakup phase right now. Don't know how long it is going to last but I eventually plan on re-entering the dating arena sometime in the next few months. Probably later than sooner.

So where does this all leave me? The special lady and I saw each other from August 2008 to this week. Plus add in the several months I spent going to fruitless dates and I am essentially back where I was in April of 2008. Single and having to go back into the dating game after being out of it for a long time. I can see why many people decide to stay in bad relationships or refuse to cut those last ties to their partners they should have let go of a long time ago. Faced with the alternative of being alone and have to start over from scratch to find someone else is very daunting and scary at this point. And it's something that it is going to take me a while to be ready for again. Logically, it shouldn't seem that way since I spent the vast majority of the last decade not in a relationship versus being in one. Optimistically, I was hoping that this decade would be different or at least start off differently. To quote Colin Firth from Love Actually,

"Alone again...naturally."

Pretty much sums up my situation right now. Until next time, peace.