Second best

Just a moment ago I stumbled across the following quote while looking for a quote to start my little topic for today. Although it is only partially relevant, I shall leave it here. It almost makes more sense than the quote I was originally looking for.

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

~ Neil Gaiman

Sigh. I hear ya Neil...though I can't hate love, mostly because I just don't want to. We're not designed that way. I can be resentful of love, sure. But that's not the same as hating it.

I actually started off looking for a quote about the past because I've been thinking a bit about love, and about the past, and how that shapes us. I did find one that I like:

“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”

~ Jan Glidewell

Again, so true. In my endless climb towards becoming a wife, I think about that. What kind of things am I holding onto so tightly from the past that they are dragging behind me like the weight of a thousand years. Today I thought of something. It's a silly little notion that was (again) perpetuated by foolishness in high school, compounded by lack of self-love, and solidified by a jaded heart. The notion is the idea of being second best.

Yep, second best, number two, second fiddle, second banana...not first. More often that not, I have felt like a second when it comes to love. Why? Like I said, it all started in high school. I remember having a crush on a boy, we would often talk and we got along well. I remember a school dance where he asked me to be his partner for one song. I was so excited - this is a HUGE thing to a teenage girl. I remember being very excited. Then my views were shattered - he had asked me to dance because he wanted to ask me about my good friend. "Is ____ single? I really like her!" Ha! As if that were the end of it, he ended up dating that girl. Then after that, he was friends with me again. One day he called me up; I was excited - was this a possibility? Nope. He wanted to know all about my best friend this time. Ugh. That was the start. I was the lamp. (See the Nov 8th post here to get what I mean).

This stupid situation coupled with years of hearing "You'd be a great girlfriend, but I don't want to date you" and a few "kinda-sorta-dating-but-not-really" moments managed to tear a strip off of me. Somehow I let myself believe that that's all I was worth. Maybe I really am nothing special. Maybe I'm just meant to play the part of lamp/friend/subordinate. Maybe.

God, I sure hope not. But as Julia Roberts says in Pretty Woman, "Sometimes the bad stuff is easier to believe". It's sad but true. And I believed it.

Luckily, I've managed to get out of the mindset a bit more when it comes love. I'm a child of God. God loves me. That MORE HUGE than any boy. I am worthy of love, and I deserve to be treated well. But it is the latter that seems to not want to sit quite right in my head just yet. Somewhere in my subconcious I have let myself care about the wrong people in the wrong ways. In the end, instead of feeling liberated in love, I feel burdened, choked up and full of glass splinters. And it sucks. Because it is this poison that stops me from finding the right kind of love and I believe I've got a lot of it to give.

Maybe instead of playing second fiddle I need to work hard enough on my solo work so I can be featured on the front lines.

Maybe.