♡

Fear of Falling in Love or Being in Love. (Secret #5)}

Monday, May 2, 2011 | 5:26 PM | 3 comment

Also known as Philophobia.

I have a confession, Internet. There's been something weighing heavy on my mind lately.

It used to be something that only came to bother me every once in a while. It would come, and I'd wave it off, and all was well again. But now that I'm starting to get older, it's bothering me a lot more. I've tried to shake it off, but it's like this huge, ominous, encroaching feeling creeping up on me, and I'm starting to think that I can't help it.

I think I'm starting to develop some kind of negative complex with love.

Now, I know what you're thinking (or maybe I don't, but oh well). 'Hopeless Romantic? Having a negative complex with love? YEAH. OKAY.'

That's what I'd think, too. Heck, this whole blog is dedicated to my misadventures with likes and loves and what have you. My freakin' pen name is 'Hopeless Romantic', for crying out loud.

But it's something I've noticed more and more lately. I'll watch a romance movie, and I'll cringe during the sappy parts that are supposed to make me cry (which I never used to do). I can barely stand to listen to love ballads (which I lived for). I can feel myself starting to resent males in general (not good).

And if those weren't indicative enough, here's the doozy: Everytime I start to picture what my first relationship could be like, where I used to think about great things happening, and feeling excited for them, now I think of them and I'm completely repulsed.
I'll think about my possible first kiss, how nervous I could be when it happens, how awful it could be, and I suddenly don't want one. Ever. I don't even want to try.

Or I'll think about bringing my first boyfriend to come meet my family, and I'm horrified. I love my family, don't get me wrong, but suddenly seeing it from that perspective, it seems too scary and embarrassing and I don't even want to think about it.

And then I'll think about how I'll constantly have to worry about little annoying girl things, like keeping my legs shaven, and how I'll have to exfoliate like every freaking day because if he wants to kiss me he'll be close enough to see like every single one of my pores and it sounds RIDICULOUS, I know, but my skin isn't completely clear or perfect and it's one of my biggest insecurities. And having someone that close to me, close enough to see my pores, close enough to see that teeny little hair on my upper lip that I just happened to miss with my tweezers, close enough that they can see the lines in my irises, it freaks me the hell out.

I had a dream last night, and I remember every single moment of it. It's resonated with me the entire day. In the dream, I was out shopping with Best Friend Rose. It was just her and I, and we were downtown somewhere, somewhere with tons of shops and tall buildings and stuff. Maybe a large city. We decided to stop in this larger department store, but then Rose had to go to the bathroom, so she told me to wait while she ran out to the bathroom, somewhere. So I was standing there with my hands full of shopping bags, right? And I'm just gazing around, looking at stuff, when I see this tall blonde guy standing about 15 feet away, just staring at me. Not in a 'woooo who's that hot shawty over thurr' way, more like the 'I'm a serial killer and I just found my next victim' kind of way. Like, he just stares at me blankly. And I start to get nervous, because here is where I finally noticed that I'm suddenly alone in store, all alone, and this psycho is staring at me all creepily.

And then he starts to walk towards me. Apparently BFR is pretty much forgotten at this point (sorry Rosie) and I immediately start to make my way toward the doors. I push them open, walking fast, and after I'm about ten feet away from the store, I hear him push through the doors too. Great. Psycho is following me, and I'm all alone on the sidewalks. Because somehow, despite being in some big city, the streets and sidewalks are basically empty, except for a bunch of parked cars. No witnesses.

I start to walk even faster. And I risk one look over my shoulder to see if I'm losing him. I'm not. In fact, he's only about 15 feet away. And all of a sudden, I come to this realization that he's my ex boyfriend. In dream land he is, I suppose. I distinctly remember him having longish blonde hair, and being very, very attractive. But it didn't discount the fact that he was glaring at me like his eyes were going to pierce through me. So I break into a run, dropping my shopping bags altogether.

"Get away," I yell at him, kind of feebly.

He replies, "I just want to talk," in the way that the killer in a movie says to their victims, 'I'm not going to hurt you,' before they kill them.

I feel like I'm not getting away from him fast enough, and I try to run fast, but I can't. Even while knowing that this is my ex boyfriend, and not a stranger serial rapist killer, I'm still terrified to death of him. It literally feels like I'm running for my life.

Suddenly he says, in an ominous change of tone, "You can't get away from me, Sarah."

I try to run faster again, and can't. It's like I'm running in sand. "Leave me alone," I scream. "Get away from me!"

"You can try to run, but it won't work. I'll find you. I'll always find you." He says calmly. "You belong to me, Sarah. You'll always belong to me."

I scream again, something unintelligible. Suddenly, I spot a Forever 21 with tons of cars parked in front, tons of people inside. I tear toward the door, throw it open, and careen inside. I go straight to the front desk. "I'm being stalked," I say to the girl on the other side. "Is there some place I can hide?"

She immediately points to the employee door at the far end of the store, and I quickly make my way to it. I jump inside, and as I turn around to close the door behind me, I see Crazy Ex-Boyfriend run into the store, searching for me. I shut the door. The employee area is empty and quiet, and when I listen closely, I can hear everything going on inside the store.

It suddenly sounds as if the store has gone empty, and I only hear the Crazy Sauce ask the employees if they saw a girl like me(all the while still calling me his girlfriend. Hah!). All of them knowing, of course, that I was hiding from him, they all play dumb and say no. I swear for a few seconds that I hear his heavy footsteps come closer and closer to the other side of the door, but he never opens it.

Instead, I suddenly hear my mom, my dad, and Rosie come in, all sounding panicked, probably looking for me. As soon as they see Crazy Man, they call him by name in surprise. They ask him if he's seen me (because apparently they don't know about his insane tendencies of stalking?). He answers, faking worry and concern, that he'd been trying to talk to me, but that I kept running away. He tells them that he has no idea where I am, and they all respond worriedly.

For some reason I stay in the small room until I hear that all of them have left the store, and I come out finally. I look around paranoid, and then I look at the employees. "He's gone, right?" I ask to confirm. They nod slowly at me, and they're looking at me strangely, like they think that maybe I just made the whole stalking thing up.

And then suddenly I see Ex-Boyfriend walk past the store windows again, looking like he was still searching around for me. His face is pinched with worry. And then somehow the dream flips perspectives, and I see the dream through his eyes. And I understand everything perfectly, differently.

Now I was the ex-boyfriend, worried like hell for the girl he still loves, the girl who always pushes him away.

When I woke up from that dream, I was extremely unsettled. Not only because it was one heckuva dream, but because that is one of my fears.

I'm scared that someday I will fall in love with someone who loves me back, and I'll lose control. Scared that I'll get too attached too fast, and one day I'll wake up, terrified, realizing what I've gotten myself into, and I'll push them far away from me. I'm scared that they'll use me and crush my soul in their fist. I'm scared that I'll love them, and that they're actually just merely 'interested'. I'm scared that it will be love, true love, amazing love, and then an accident will happen and they'll be taken from me forever.

I think I'm so scared of love because it ends. It always seems to end. Something always happens. Someone cheats, or someone loses interest completely, or someone dies before the other. And the thought of going through that pain scares me so honestly that it makes me want to cry.

I don't want to be one of those people that never does anything because of their fear.
But lately I can honestly say that the thought of any of those happening is enough to make me question if I ever want to go through something like that. It doesn't sound worth it. And I've had no reason to personally believe that it is.

It's funny, because in Middle School, I would have killed to have a boyfriend. It was almost everything to me. But now, after I've gotten older and realized the painful repercussions of love, I cringe whenever I think of having one. I used to be afraid of being alone forever, but now I'm honestly starting to think I might be better off alone.

It sounds ridiculous and melodramatic, but maybe it's the best thing. Jane Austen never got married, and she turned out okay. Great, even. Maybe that's how it will be for me.

I'll see if this passes. Maybe this is just a weird mood I've been in with my stress lately. I suppose we'll see.

xo Hopeless Romantic

(P.S. I finally added comments for each entry and Older Posts Newer Posts links. I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out!)

Labels: fear, life, love, secrets

present me past me

♡

"This song is talking to the person you haven't even met yet. Maybe they're rolling around in the hay with someone else, but they're not as good as you're gonna be. You just have to wait your turn. He's out there, she's out there. They're just learning what to contrast you against."

Questions? Concerns? Random observations?
Leave me a message here, or email me here. ♥