Leaving Love to Dreams

What is love? I've been asking myself that question for a very long time. I've watched those Romantic movies, desiring to be the one swept off my feet and held in a warm embrace. I wanted to be kissed like I've never been kissed. I wanted to fall head over heels. I wanted to be happy, but love to me is like sand from an hourglass. And it still slips through my hands.

I don't question my love for family. The arguments have finally stopped, but the tension still lingers. And one of these days, I will have to leave the nest again, but hopefully this time, I won't need to return. I clash with my younger siblings for their experience is not mine, and they have yet to learn those harsh lessons I have learned. I watch two of my brothers get married and start their lives, but I don't feel left behind. I yearn for love, but I've grown comfortable with the single life.

Every time I look back, I see the train wreck called my relationships. I see the vicious cycle that left me on spin, tearing my world apart. My mistakes still cut me deep, and regret could be the poison to suffocate me, if I let it. So, I don't look back. Why should I? I can't save my heart from being destroyed or salvage the love that I had broken. I can't turn back time or hold to the sands of love pouring through my hands. I just let it be, and I move on. Maybe, I am better off alone.

I used to dream of love. I wanted my heart found and saved. I've learned now that life does not work that way, and if you want love, to be loved, you have to go out and find it. But then you have to play the relationship game, test his trust, and hope not to be snared in another round of mind games. Maybe I'm tired of playing the game. We try so hard to be two kinds of people, the one you want us to be and who we really are inside, and I'm done hiding. I've learned that if people don't like me, then they don't like me. You can't bend over backward to make the world happy and deny yourself from being yourself. You only live once, so why live a lie?

I want to be loved. I want the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders. I want to breathe. I want to be free, but over these last years, I worry. I've walked down so many wrong roads, losing myself in the process, and I will not lose myself again. I can't tell the saints from the sinners, and my heart is a patchwork of proof. Broken shards of past slice me deep, but my skin is tougher now. I still walk alone, and love remains to me nothing more than sands from the hourglass, slipping endlessly from my hand.