One of the saddest things in the world is to feel, after years and years of thinking there is something wrong with your heart and that you have closed up shop for good to your emotions, you have finally met someone you could really and truly love only to realize they can never ever be someone who would or could feel the same way back. When it first happens, you tell yourself that you will get over it, that it is just a passing fancy, then when it gets stronger you still deny what you're feeling, like that guy in that 10cc song "I'm Not In Love."

But once you realize that the feelings are here to stay, that you will always like this person but (it is so obvious it goes without saying, but just in case) never ever tell her, the thing isn't (as I used to think) to throw yourself into other people, but to throw yourself, your mind, your heart and your soul into other things (volunteering, finding a new hobby, making new friends.) The heart is very stubborn and wants what it wants, but I still think there is hope for the mind...in knowledge and in realizing you still want to learn new stuff, still love your books and music, still have hope that someday your heart will follow your mind and join the land of the living.

Some people believe unrequited love is merely a result or a side effect of being afraid and/or unable to have real and lasting mutually reciprocated relationships with people who are actually interested in you and could even love you back, but I sincerely do not think that is the case. The thing about unrequited love that people who have never experienced it before may not realize is that most people would do anything to get rid of it and want to be in real and lasting mutually reciprocated relationships. 

Unrequited love is not 'cute' or a school girl crush or a Lifetime movie, it is really caring for and respecting and having genuine feelings for a wonderful person and hoping that you can emotionally move on one day and make peace with what is still in your heart, but carefully tucked away in a strong but safe corner...

 

 

"Appearance should not be mistaken for truth." That is so very true. People who talk but cannot always get their thoughts out very well may actually be secretly and painfully shy and not as idiotic as they appear, private people hiding their hurt may come across as aloof and...jerks, well, jerks may actually really be jerks, but they also may be people who just do not how else to behave. They may even do jerky things not realizing they are acting like jerks.

These are not excuses or justifications, but just the differences between how things may seem and how they actually are. I know because I think you really can just tell sometimes how someone truly sees you and I have seen the politely contained look in someone's eyes that lets me know they think I am an idiot. I know that I unintentionally can most definitely act like an idiot, but I never mean to and I think just maybe, deep down, that I am not as dumb as I feel when I am around people. It really is both weird and horrible that you can really, really like people and yet just be no good around them...

 

If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

I was reading a book for work and it referenced the above, without attributing it to anyone. The way the author wrote about it I knew the passage must be well-known and so I typed the words in Google and discovered they are from Jane Eyre, which I have never read.

These words jumped out at me with a vengeance because at the time I was reading them I was experiencing a huge amount of self-loathing and I have been going through this solitude lately that feels both good and bad. Good in that I cannot possibly make as many social faux pas (or worse) if I am not around others and bad because, well...after a while solitude can just feel so lonely and as the passage that follows so aptly puts it:

"No: I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don’t love me, I would rather die than live—I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen."

I feel like I cannot really write about these words more, or truly know them, without also knowing the full context and more about Jane Eyre. The words are so haunting me that I went into the Kindle store and just downloaded it for free.

I hope to get to it after I finish a book that I have been purposely taking my time with because it has so much to say and I think that it may really help me embrace solitude better without embracing the self-loathing. It really is a wonderful book:

 




 

This is such good advice. Sometimes, when we really want something to be a certain way, our heart can almost make us think it is that way but, in the end, that is neither practical nor very good nor fair to anyone involved. Things that cannot be changed just are the way they are and accepting that is crucial to a healthy well being and state of mind...easier said than done, but something I really, really want to work on in my life...

I wish more than anything this were possible. I have long wished this could be so and have always found this to be one of my favorite Proverbs. My mother, if she knew, would be so happy that I have been reading the Bible tonight. It is so weird how sometimes, because of things I have read and heard from strangers and from people in my own life, that I feel like I do not have the right to be both gay and Christian.

Wanting to guard my heart would be the same no matter whether I was gay or not. I have been struggling in my feelings now for a few years on and then things recently grew more complicated when I started getting attached, in a different way, to a different person while also still feeling how I do about the first person.

There are so many ways to care about someone and still get hurt because you got too attached and they did not. It can be romantic or platonic, familial or work-related, no matter what the context, letting your heart open up to friendship or love is still risking getting hurt very painfully and I do not think you have to be cynical to believe that.

But wishing you had better guarded your heart only after your heart got too attached is like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube after it has popped out or closing the barn door after the horse has already fled.

I do not know why, exactly, but I find it kind of sad-funny that the very book that has been used to vilify and hate gay people is the very book that is comforting me right now.



 New International Version
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
New Living Translation
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
English Standard Version
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
New American Standard Bible
Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.
King James Bible
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Holman Christian Standard Bible
Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.
International Standard Version
Above everything else guard your heart, because from it flow the springs of life.
NET Bible
Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it are the sources of life.
Aramaic Bible in Plain English
Keep your heart with all caution because from it is the outgoing of life.
GOD'S WORD® Translation
Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it.
JPS Tanakh 1917
Above all that thou guardest keep thy heart; For out of it are the issues of life.
New American Standard 1977
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
            For from it flow the springs of life.