Beginnings

The topic of this blog is a reader request: trust me, I'm just as surprised as you are...

I have a love-hate relationship with relationships.
Ask any one of my close friends (please don't) and they will tell you that I fall hard, fast and deep, loving intimately and passionately, with a relatively high turnover rate. 

Maybe it's all the Taylor Swift I listen to. I don't know, whatever.

As you will know if you've read my previous blogs, I love being single and the freedom that comes with it. 

I really do.
You get those people who are like "I'm a strong independent woman and I don't need a man to complete me", and then they go home and cry themselves to sleep with Adele's "21" and their nineteen cats. Almost as though the societal discourse that tells us we need a relationship to be happy has warped and evolved and turned itself inside out to tell people that you have to actively display just how totally okay you are with not being in a relationship, even if you're not okay?
Yeah I think I went too far with that one. But the point is, I am usually quite genuinely happy to not be in a relationship.

Despite this, I find myself more often than not in a stage of 'between boyfriends', never really single for long (a la Fergie in that awful track Clumsy, for those with a penchant for bad pop).
I honestly try to avoid it, but something always pulls me in. 

It's those butterflies you get when you make eyes across the room and you instantly want to know whats going on behind those big brown eyes.

It's the chill you get when he his skin brushes against yours for the first time, and despite not knowing him that well you feel like he's gotten under your skin and memorised you from the inside out. 

We're only human, and these simple little human pleasures are what really get under my skin, in the best way. 

I wasn't looking for it. I know its a hideous cliche but love stumbles over and sucks your face off in the middle the Midnight Shift when you really least expect it.
As soon as you really stop looking for love and learn to be happy, that's when it finds you.

Which is actually really cruel and ironic of the universe but just roll with it for now, okay?

And despite repeatedly telling myself that I do not want a boyfriend, I gave him my number and I took the offer for a date.
The nervousness of whether he'll find you interesting or funny when you're sober, the relief when he thinks it's cute when you stumble over your one pre-planned joke and he laughs anyway, the simultaneous relief and excitement when you discover some common mutual interests and you breeze through an hour of conversation like it was nothing.

It's the little things, things that don't make a relationship, but more of an intense, heart throbbing crush. When he walks you home and kisses you by the front door before bidding you goodnight (or rolls over in the morning and kisses you on the forehead before slipping out of bed because he's late for work - I don't judge), and your heart expands while your head contracts and you just feel as though you've turned over every new leaf in the middle of Autumn to find that the ground you once stood on has changed completely. 

It's a certain kind of magic that exists between two people, and with enough energy and enough belief, it's truly a spark that will never go out. 

That's the rush that I live for. 

But as is always the case, life has other plans. 

Sparks can live forever but it doesn't mean it's going to keep two people together.
And now I find myself on the other side, spark still lingering, but my head coming back down to the atmosphere and acknowledging that I just wrote the final sentence in my latest chapter. 

I knew it was coming the moment I laid eyes on him, the moment I laid my hands on him, and the moment I just laid with him.
But I'll regret nothing. 

Whether is burns forever or eventually fades, those who are lucky enough to have experienced real love should never, ever regret it.
And as my life continues on, and I strive to make it out of the 'between boyfriends' zone and land safely into 'single', I feel lucky to have had these incredible beginnings with incredible people.
And one day in the future, I might even have them again. 

"isn't this the best part of breaking up?
finding someone else you can't get enough of" - Liz Phair

"and on a Wednesday, in a cafe, I watched it begin again" - Taylor Swift