found.

i have always maintained that i would never settle.
i have been lucky enough to surround myself in love and loving couples my whole life - first with my beautiful parents who taught me that long lasting love and respect is possible...and in later years, with couples who value and adore each other beyond my wildest dreams.  it has been both an incredible yet frustrating experience to witness such love as i stood on the sidelines waiting to find my own butterflies.  my own person to give me that love and affection i so desperately wanted. so i vowed to never, ever, settle.

so i searched, and well, searched i did. through an endless barage of bad dates and even worse relationships.  to the point where i was so upset and frustrated that i thought maybe i was the anomoly - that i was the forever singleton who would celebrate and appreciate the love around me, but never have love to call my own.

until now.
until AB.

i have found the butterflies that i had been looking for.  that i had been hoping for.  when i felt my most lost, he found me.  i quite literally have been found and in that process, discovered the butterflies only dreams could be made of.  my dreams, in fact.

he makes me feel special everyday and he has this amazing ability to lift my spirits by just smiling.  he tells me he loves waking up beside me in the morning and when we kiss, he kisses me like i'm the only thing that matters. 

i know it is early on, but i have been through enough almost-butterflies, lust, thrust, and smitten-ness to know that this is different.  this is beyond any of that.  this is soul-lust and brain-thrust and this is real.  and for me, real never constituted romantic.  but it is more romantic than i ever imagined.  AB has pushed me into a reality of existence i never thought possible - one where a relationship is both a friendship and lovership.  one where support and kindness can be better than thrills and orgasms.   and while the orgasms are ever present, they are but a mere side dish to a wonderful main dish that makes me swoon with every bite.

we search each and every day to find experiences and thrills that bring us to a new place.  that enable us to brag to our friends about said moments - moments that help us grow and understand ourselves a little better.  i never thought i would find an experience like AB.  that i would find a person who so closely matched everything i could have ever asked for in a partner, lover, or friend. 

but i did.
and i couldn't be more happier to be found.

fire and rain

as little girls, or big girls, for that matter, we set unrealistic expectations for the man we will eventually fall in love with.  "the man" we want to marry - the man who will find us, rescue us, and sweep us off our feet for all of eternity.

"my man" has many traits: he must love animals, but not want one.  he must want children, but be open to not having any.  he must hold doors open for ladies, write well, and speak highly of his mother.  he must accept my love for britney spears and understand my need for a good cup of coffee in the morning.  he must recognize that reading fiction and hating movies that were orginally books is the right thing to do.  he must know that James Taylor is a romantical genious and that the song "fire and rain" is the most romantical song in history.

enter AB. who understands, accepts, and has nice little check marks against everything that i have listed above.


i should barely like him but i feel like i already love him.  he stands for and holds dear everything that i have ever appreciated and been passionate about in my life.  he's a man at 25...and a wonderful man at that.  he is not a boy, not a boy in any sense of the word. he lost his dad to the big C word almost 2 years ago and that made him a very mature and well represented man very early on.  that i recognized immediately. 

where i am loud and obnoxious, he is thoughtful and shy.  where i am mean and rude, he is thoughtful and inquisitive.  and for these reasons, i am completely smitten.  i feel like he holds the power to rescue me from this terrible place i have been residing these past few months and i'm both scared and excited to see where this goes.

he gives me butterflies where i have never felt them before - in my soul.  i want to know him, inside and out.  and i want him to break down the barriers i have built up so strongly after dealing with bullshit and idiocy for as long as i can remember.   he makes life interesting and worth living again. and we've only been out on two dates.

i can't wait to see what happens.  

sometimes a girl just needs a good label

i have somehow lost my way in my search for butterflies.
tonight i feel empty and lost after feeling full and found for a staggering three months.
yes, people, three.  this is big for me, okay?

oh mr. bank, how i will miss you.  he entered  my life with such gusto, grace, and fun that i never wanted him to leave.  but leave he did - off to the big city - the city that i seem to lose all of my lovers to.  he met me on a Thursday and found out the following Monday that he had received the job offer of a lifetime, a job that would require relocation. 

instead of running in the other direction, he talked to me about it.  yes, talked. like, as in feelings and shit.  he told me that he liked where this was going and that he wanted to continue it even after he moved to the big city.  was i up for it?

hell yeah homie.

and so began a month of moving preparations and constantly trying to push the feeling of anxiety and insecurity over a long distance relationship out of my head.  we had only been dating a month and he was leaving.  how do you get to know someone when they are five hours away?

you make it work, people.  or so tim gunn would say.

and oh, i tried. i tried so.damn.hard to make it work.  he moved - on a rainy August morning and we made plans for me to go down and visit him two weekend's later.  the visit was mixed with feelings of passion, happiness, sadness, and pure embarassment.

yes, i said embarssment.  i drank too much wine on friday night and let it slip i had referred to him as my BOYFRIEND to a coworker.  he took the word BOYFRIEND as though it was the most vile thing he had ever heard.

"wow," he said, "i haven't been labelled in a really long time."
wow indeed.

i was so hurt and thrown back that i was rendered speechless for what seemed like 5 minutes.  it probably wasn't even 5 seconds.  so i apologized and changed the subject immediately.  but it wasn't the same after.

not at all the same.  after i left Sunday night and flew back to my wonderful home, i couldn't help but feel terrible about the whole thing.  why was he so worried about a label?  i'm a marketer - my life is full of labels and branding.  sometimes a girl needs a good label, i think.

and Mr. Bank wouldn't give it to me.  and to add to my misery, his texting was inconsisent and cold upon my return from his new home.  i was confused and sad - gone were the days of cute pet names and random sexting.  Mr. Bank had become distant and weird. 

i won't get into the nitty details but he ended it tonight.  he was so uncomfortable with my boyfriend bomb that he said he felt smothered and pressured between two cities.  it appears that in the end, i was dumped over a stupid label.  

but why do labels get such a bad rap? they aren't necessarily a bad thing.  labels help us  identify and they hold recognizable features that make us feel comfortable and safe.  that's all i wanted with Mr. Bank - comfortable and safe.  secure and wanted.   and now that's gone.  all because of my want for a label in the first place.

good bye Mr. Bank.

the space in between.

it has been quite sometime since i've sat down to write.
these past few months, the space in between my last post..and now, is a space that is so indescribable, i don't even know where to begin.

i guess it begins with my idea of taking a hiatus.  a hiatus from dating. from badboys. from heart ache and drunken texts.  i think i lost myself in a myriage of boys and dates - seeking desperately to find those butterflies.  i was focusing so much on the idea of a perfect boy that i stopped focusing on me. 

i vowed to take three months (beginning in January) to not date, to not have sex, and to focus on me.  it didn't work.  i wound up breaking the rules almost two months in with a dumb boy who i met through a friend at work.  i think the hiatus did the exact opposite of what i wanted - it made me needy and horny...and those two together are a disasterous combination.  this dumb boy episode made me realize that i did want to find someone - but someone who wanted a relationship and was going to be a constant in my life.  

so i took up online dating.
yeah. i am still totally embarassed about it.
it's like admitting that you failed at normal social conditions - that my stupid hiatuses and silly ways have driven me to face an online buffet of desperate men in my city. and you know what? thus far, it has been a disaster.  well, i did meet one almost match - the almost lawyer.  but he's a story for another day.

instead, i am going to tell you the story of jj. the man who i totally fell head over heels for instantly.  the man who i could totally see myself being with.  ah, the man who was married.

jj and i connected immediately - there was a spark like i had never felt before and the conversation and flirtation was amazing.  we were superstars in each other's company and it was only inevitable that something was going to happen.  we started meeting each other for wine after work and created this amazing pseudo-friendship where you could cut the sexual tension with a knife. 

the affair began in the parking lot of a restaurant with a simple kiss and ended in a tragic tear fest.  there is a lot in between that is still too fresh and too raw to put down into words right now.  what we did was completely wrong and for that, i should be sorry. but i'm not.  it seems so unfair that situation and circumstance can get in the way of what could have been the greatest love of all.   unfair seems to be the common demonator - unfair that jj got the best of both worlds, unfair that i'm not with him, and unfair that there is nothing i can do about it.

i wish this story had a happy ending. i wish my absence had purpose or merit. instead i'm nursing heart ache and anger.
the space in between was so filled with promise for a short period of time, but was taken away to reveal a dark, empty void.