I seem to leave a trail. My scent, I guess, is what pain picks up on because no matter where I seem to go, it finds me. We do this dance where I try to spin away from it. Yet it twirls me back in with elegance and grace. Like two ballroom dancers that have been partners for a decade. We know each others bodies well. We don’t have our own rhythms for we even breath as one. There is no resistance for our energies rely on one another. Where ever pain is, I am there. Where ever I am, pain lives. It’s a dark romance that I see to fully understand.

Since childhood I have had to deal with trials and tribulations that seemed unfair. Divorce plagues my family. I used to think that divorce ceremonies would be better to attend than fictitious weddings that were draped in “Happily Ever Afters” then within months, at most a year, love turned into hate. Love turned into ugly.

I was molested as a kid. Yea, you can just tack that onto the other statistical attributes that I’ve got going on. He was a family friend just like studies say the probability of that is. During that same year, I spent 8 out of my 9 school months being severely bullied. Did I bring this all upon my self? I want to say not. What child at 13 wants to live in such emotional misery? Yet from most of this I grew strong. Yes, there are minor flaws in my thinking, in my self, from all that’s happened to me. But I could have turned out worse, no?

As I grew older I realized that the current state in which you’re living has a lot to do with your inner self. How you talk to yourself, your thought process, your inner dialogue. I began to change it and life seemed to get better. My thoughts of hating this place,life here on Earth, dwindled. I didn’t have such an urge to want to go “home” home. I found beauty in the small details around me, bringing about a more fuller, prettier,”larger than life” way of thinking. Slowly I became awakened. I am still going through that process for it’s not something that happens over night. It’s not something that you conquer and then move on. It’s continual. It’s a way of life

One aspect of pain though that I cannot seem to shake off are the pains of Love. How ironic, no? Does that even make sense? How can Love possibly bring pain? Love is LOVE!

I am a romantic soul, some may say fool. Since childhood I have always wanted to find that one true mate to live life with, just building fond memories one life given moment at a time. A partner in crime to accompany me in taking on the world. I imagined us chasing dreams, accomplishing goals, truly obtaining all that we’ve wanted, with very few hiccups while on that path to shared happiness. I have encountered many loves in my life. I’ve dated for I am not one to turn away from an opportunity to find this person. But they all seem to come and go for one reason or another. I was telling my mother the other day, “I feel as though with every person I meet and become entangled with, I get closer to the perfect person for me. Once I feel like I found them, they slip through my fingers, and I am unable to grasp. They just slip away like it was a phase. A quick affair with love, a prank of life. A tease.” I do try to look at what role I play in all this. In some relationships I have had, I knew that they weren’t for me. But of course that humanistic nature of feeling like you can change that took over my intuition and therefore I found myself in once again another heart wrenching situation. Other times, they played me like violin. It started off slow and sweet, then turned abrupt, ending in a quick finish, putting on a show for god knows who. Me, being left there, totally used. Once, I found love, but life at that point was difficult and I had to move away, leaving them behind. It was one of the hardest things I had to do in life. We kept in contact for quite awhile but with time and distance that love slowly faded away.

Recently I found joy and bliss in the arms of someone. They aren’t perfect but I believe slightly perfect for me. It’s only been three months since we began building our relationship yet now I am seeing things, feeling things, that are filling my heart with doubt. How wonderful could life really be if at least once a week we are arguing over things that in the overall scheme of life, hardly matters at all? I am now beginning to dread any time we spend together because I feel as though at some point while spending time together, SOMETHING is going to happen to make our sunny days dark. Where once I cared to have no guard up at all, now I found that I have built a Great Wall of sorts, just to keep the negativity at bay. Is that fair to anyone? There are moments when I feel my intuition is telling me to let things go, at least for now. But then I wonder is that me just simply wanting to give up? Nothing beautiful comes from giving up for beauty is sometimes found in the struggle.

So here I am doing this little dance, once again pain and I. In the next week I will find myself busy with life and all of its demands of me. I’m hoping that within the chaos of my life, I am pointed in the right direction of what it is I need to do. For although I am a lover of love, I will not settle. I know what a beautiful relationship consists of. I know what happiness is. I will not settle for something cloaked in the robes of the imaginary. I rather wait, no matter how long it takes, to be free and love nakedly. I shall wear love on my skin. A sincere, genuine love.

I will end today’s piece with reminding myself, and all of you, nothing is in vain. There are good things that come out of everything. Every bad breakup, every bad decision, every bad…well ANYTHING, you can find some good of it. Sometimes you may have to look a little harder to find it but there is always some good there. And like my man Kurt Cobain once said, “Thank You for the tragedy. I need it for my art..”