Naivety

I've been reminiscing a lot recently and frankly speaking, I don't even know why. I think about past loves and past relationships and also friendships. There were at least two relationships in which it began from a friendship first. One of them acts like we never knew each other at all and the other keeps a distance from me as of this moment.

Perhaps it is for the best, I guess. When I love, I love too hard and yet when my heart gets broken, I still love the person who broke my heart in some way. If I were to put it into words, I guess my heart is torn up with many missing puzzle pieces and I know that those pieces will never return somehow.

I turned 26 this year and I find it hard to believe that I've been through ups and downs of relationships since I was 14. Sometimes I thought to myself, wow it's been 12 years since my first ever relationship? Out of all of the six exes I ever had (I had really short relationships and mostly got dumped), I can safely say that only one remained as a friend who I can talk to almost all the time and the other one who I thought would stay friend as well has become really distant from me.

I admit that when I was younger, I crushed easily and it was very easy for me to confess and I was naive enough to believe that the guy felt the same way for me when they told me that it was ok and for us to try working out a relationship only to find out later that I was being used all along. One guy who was my confidante once confessed to me because he couldn't stand me crying anymore for another guy who dumped me through a phone call and yet six months later, he told me that he doesn't love me anymore.

I actually for once went through a rebound phase after that because there were no obvious signs at all that our relationship was in trouble and yet to get a text saying "let's break up, I don't love you anymore", I think my world kind of turned upside down a little bit. Best part was that I was actually acting out a break up scene the next day for an assignment video so needless to say, the poor guy acting out the guy dumping me actually got slapped for real when he couldn't dodge in time.

It was then I realized that I was really affected by the break up and I even stupidly confessed to one of my best friends at that point in time but my best friend was smart enough to realize that I was just going through a rebound stage hence he never returned my feelings. I guess there were already signs that it would not work out with the guy who dumped me but I chose to naively believe that love would conquer all and that it would be us against the world.

I was only 18 at that point in time and yet I felt like I didn't want to fall for someone again for a long long time. I guess fate has a funny way of playing with us as I fell again less than a year later and it was my longest yet most disastrous relationship ever. I lost so many things in that relationship, I lost my spark, I lost my innocence, I lost my naivety but most of all, I lost that part of me who trusts in love.

When I finally left him after all of the abuse, I realized that I found it hard to believe that I was worthy to be loved and also hard to trust anyone saying that they loved me for me because I jumped through so many hoops in order to be loved by him and was never made to feel that I would be loved for myself that until this day, I still carry that insecurity with me despite having in a committed relationship for almost 5 and 1/2 years now.

Occasionally I see people younger than me and they have so much hope for their relationship and me being the cynic will be thinking to myself that they should just wait and see. I wish I never lost that naive side of myself because it does get really hard to believe that you can loved just for being yourself and that people can be trusted. I'm always 99% in but 1% out just so that I don't 100% lose myself ever again.