excerpts from my response to him
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It’s difficult to let go enough to know that I could be hurt. I’m not sure I have the power. It might be easier if he didn’t live 4 hours away, but now that he’s back in Jeff City and I am alone, except for my son, it makes me wonder if the pain is truly worth it. Sad and scary, huh. I’m strong in all ways.. except in ways of the heart.. but the only reason I’ve been strong there is because I’ve never let anyone in.. the strength isn’t in letting someone in, it is knowing that they can hurt you, but that I am able to look past the posibility of hurt and actually live again…

I responded to a blog entry about passion a while back. Everyone was commenting about passion thinking he meant sex, but it was obvious to anyone with a brain he was not talking sex.. or at least not JUST talking sex. I wrote a long note.. *giggle* wonder how many of the females I ticked off.. but anyway.. yeah. as I told him, passion is important.. a life without passion is no life at all.. but I guess I’d let passion go from the vulnerability of love.. I’d given up on it, perhaps. I remember telling a friend once that I could never see him and his wife working because they didn’t have the “passion” and he too thought I was talking about sex. *sigh* (I was right, btw, they didn’t work out) it’s something tangible sometimes, this passionate love. Sometimes you can truly see it when you look at a couple. I do! I do want that again! But I’m still scared! *sigh*

I met this guy online.. he’s in the SCA and has the same basic religious beliefs as I do.. and the similarities don’t stop there! We like the same types of movies and books and such. I mean, we aren’t exactly alike, but we definitely enjoy much of the same stuff.. and to me.. well, that’s important to me. I know that “opposites attract” and all those things, but I’ve found, in my limited experience, that when two people have things in common, it gives them so much more to talk about! :)

I hope I can “learn” that love is worth it.. and I certainly hope that this is “the one” cuz if I get hurt again.. well…
but then, see, that is my other problem.. when I start getting scared, I start pushing people away. I was in a fairly good marriage (money was our biggest issue.. isn’t it almost always?) and I loved him to death… but .. for some reason, I got scared. (mid life crisis? at 34? *sigh*) and I managed to drive him away.. I’m not even sure why or how.. I do know I was needing someone who understood my job (I was a teacher) so I could whine about it.. but I could have utilized friends for that. To this day.. I wonder.. I don’t regret, but I’ve seen myself do this time and again.. don’t let them in or if they get in, push them away before they get bored with me. I don’t want to do that again! I don’t like it! I don’t like the results… I don’t like… how I end up breaking something that may have never broken if not for me, my doubts and my protecting myself.. does that make sense?