With a recent breakup under my belt and Valentine’s Day approaching, I have had many thoughts of “love” running through my mind.

Love is a “crap shoot”. You take your chances, and you may “win big” or be left with nothing. But unlike Vegas, in loving someone, we are never “left with nothing”. Each relationship we enter into teaches us something, if we can look past the anger, hurt, frustration and sense of failure that we feel when it doesn’t work out.

We can “play it safe” and hold our whole selves and intensity of our emotions and passions back for fear of being hurt. But, you get out of this life what you put into it. If we enter in to something, “half assed” that is what we get back.

That is not my style. I am a survivor, I am passionate; and after looking death in the eye (more than once), I do not settle for “half assed” in love or anything else.

I’d much rather have no relationship that a bad relationship. I’d rather be alone than “settle”. (Wow, doesn’t that sound “hard assed and independent”?)

But ideally, I would rather have “the whole enchilada”; hot, spicy, and not for the faint of heart than a life of playing it safe and mediocrity, and have a meaningful, productive life and share it with someone else.

You see, I do not believe that a person can fully, truly and wholly love (and receive the same kind of love in return) without letting their guard down and giving up their fear and control. Oh, but I will so take it back and build up impenetrable walls in a heartbeat if betrayed or mislead; One can not survive what I have in this life, without having one hell of a survival instinct.

Face it, when we enter into a relationship, we put our best foot forward. We want to be “worthy of love”. (Because, more often than not, we do not recognize that we already are) We want to be exactly the kind of person that the object of our affection would love. In most cases, it is an innocent case of “trying to be the best that we can be”. In other cases, those that could only be classified as “predators’ use whatever means they can find to “catch” their “prey” for whatever it is that they want to get from them in the short term. No matter how hurt or angry we may feel after a breakup, most of our failed relationships fall in the former category, not the latter.

I have known so many people in this life who have given up, who would rather not risk being hurt than roll the dice in the hope of winning; of winning a true love, one that will love them for who they are, warts and all, one that will not run at the first sign of challenge or the realization that relationships are hard work and that no one will be “perfect”.

I do not want to be like that.

We need to maintain our individuality and our own hopes and goals if we want to be a full partner in a healthy, functional relationship. We cannot give up who or what we are, but we can and should give up the façade. If someone isn’t going to love us for who and what we are and feel, who needs them?

Many of us (myself at the top of the list) feel that if we show our vulnerability, our weakness and faults, that no one will love us. We lose hope and are not true to ourselves because of it.  When we are not true to ourselves, we will never attract someone who will love and appreciate the "real" us.

When we give up “hope”, what do we have left?

I WILL love again, because I can.

And with that, I’m going to leave you with the lyrics to a country song (that some may consider lame, but says a lot if you really read the words)

 

Standing on the border
Looking out into the great unknown
I can feel my heart beating faster as I step out on my own
There's a new horizon and the promise of favorable wind
I'm heading out tonight, traveling light
I'm gonna start all over again

And buy a one-way ticket on a west bound train
See how far I can go
I'm gonna go out dancing in the pouring rain
And talk to someone I don't know
I will face the world around me
Knowing that I'm strong enough to let you go
And I will fall in love again
Because I can

Gonna climb the mountain
And look the eagle in the eye
I won't let fear clip my wings and tell me how high I can fly
How could I have ever believed
That love could be so blind
When freedom was waiting, down at the station
All I had to do was make up my mind

And buy a one-way ticket on a west bound train
See how far I can go
I'm gonna go out dancing in the pouring rain
And talk to someone I don't know
I will face the world around me
Knowing that I'm strong enough to let you go
And I will fall in love again
Because I can

Well, I have walked through the fire
And crawled on my knees through the valley of the shadow of doubt
Then the truth came shining like a light on me and now
I can see my way out

I'm gonna buy a one-way ticket on a west bound train
See how far I can go
I'm gonna go out dancing in the pouring rain
And talk to someone I don't know

I'm gonna buy a one-way ticket on a west bound train
Gonna have my breakfast with some pink champagne
I'm gonna sail the ocean, I'm gonna spread my wings
I'm gonna climb that mountain, gonna do everything.