Wants, Needs, and Being Open to Something More

It’s interesting, trying to find the balance between these three things, and I find myself continually challenged trying to strike just that.

Wants

I found a pretty independent streak this year. Perhaps it’s the product of a ton of solo travel, breaking out of my comfort zone more than a few times, and making the decision to uproot and move, but I’ve grown rather confident in my abilities to get myself around, to trust my own instincts and decisions.

I want to explore.
I want to learn.
I want to see if these crazy dreams of mine can actually be a way of life. (I believe they can!)
I want flat black boots because I really hate the ones with heels that I have right now.

Needs

I need to learn to cook vegetarian/pescatarian meals that don’t rely on pasta (your suggestions are welcome!).
I need to burn the midnight oil working my tail off to make those dreams realities.
I need to see Rocky (or so I’m told).
I need to fix the rearview mirror in my car.

I’ve always felt I needed to find that kind of independence, self-trusting ability. I was digging through old journals last week and found an old AIM conversation between myself and my long-time friend Steve. We were in our freshmen year at different colleges, waxing grown-up about the things we were learning and the people we were becoming. We got to talking about our own biggest strengths and greatest challenges and he told me:

“You need to learn to trust yourself. You need to stop asking other people what you feel and trust your own feelings.”

Now that it’s ten years later, I’m finally feeling like I get that.

Being open to something more

Enter today.

Today, I’m starting a thing* with a someone** that’s kind of blowing me away, even when I didn’t want it to, even when I told myself that involving someone else in my volatile and open-ended life was the opposite of what I needed right now (and what anyone else needed to put themselves through).

Today, I’m learning what it means to find the balance between trusting my own abilities and independent streak and when to let the walls down in order to let someone else in.

Today, I’m learning what it means to want desperately to close down completely. To get scared of my future, in which my immediate reality actually has only a few solid answers. More often than I was prepared to, I’m finding myself wanting to hole up, spend hours working, searching for apartments, and for someone selling an old SUV-type Jeep-type car for reallyreally cheap.

Today, I’m learning that when I want to run and hide, this is most often when I need to take a step back and stop being so freaking stubborn.

Speaking of shutting doors, I’ve made it a pretty strong point to close off to the idea of a relationship for the last year or so. I learned a few things from my own behavior in past relationships I wanted to avoid repeating, so I felt it best to avoid that for awhile.

Other excuses: I’ve been busy. Traveling. On a great soul-search for what the next chapter in my life holds. Who has time for romance in the middle of that?!

And exactly like they always say, exactly as cliché as it ever was, exactly when you least expect it – least WANT it – there it is. At your doorstep, refusing to be ignored.

I’ll admit I’ve been a pain in the ass kind teeny bit of a fighter. I’ve been every shade of indecisive. Completely warm and open, and then suddenly completely shut down.

And he’s still here. Given adequate opportunity to run at full speed in the other direction, to throw in the towel, to kick and scream and tell me that if I can’t get to where he is, then he’s out. No more shenanigans, no more fair-weathered. Wants none of it.

But he’s still here.

Meet me halfway

Between short stacks and French restaurants and exploring new places, between fighting over the MLB playoff series and plotting ways to see every single stadium together, between setting goals and holding each other accountable, between laughing our asses off or having really difficult conversations, between his understanding that I really can’t do scary movies and being perfectly happy with Shrek and The Fantastic Mr. Fox instead, between wanting so deeply to learn from each other, and between wanting to make an effort to understand each other despite profound and crazy (and sometimes downright frustrating) differences in every single thing about the way we’re each wired.

Between all of that, the constant is that something kept us trying (I say it’s a nagging little birdie-like voice in my head; he says it has something to do with my heart – clearly you can see who is and isn’t the romantic one in this thing*). Something in him makes me want to be the absolute best version of myself, and something in me must be just enough to make my intolerable qualities somehow tolerable (I’m thinking it’s my awkward cuteness. It must be).

And something tells me that I need and want to be open to that kind of more. Because I’m 100% confident that this doesn’t come around all that often.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

*don’t ask me to define it; I’ll break out in hives.

**He is amazing.  And just because I don’t know where we’re landing, I know I’m finally fully invested in finding out.

Tagged as: growing up, it's always cute in the beginning, letting my guard down