I’m convinced. Relationships just aren’t for me. Every time I try to cultivate a relationship with someone, it always ends in a gut-wrenching, mind-boggling, what-the-fuck happened, and what was it all for kind of disappointment. The blissful feelings of falling in love turn out to be a mirage, and I ultimately end up falling on my ass. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s the women I’m choosing. Maybe it’s the world around us.
In my thirty-something years of living, the reasons for my failed relationships have transpired in many different ways. Whether the love between us was unable to overcome long distance, or a stressful time in life caused one of us to push the other away, the outcome has always ended the same. In an inevitable state of singularity.
I like to think of myself as a soldier of love, and that love truly is a battlefield. Each of us set out on our mission to find that special someone to share love and happiness with that will last a lifetime, all the while trying to avoid becoming a casualty of war. The journey is an emotional roller-coaster filled with memorable highs and lows. Only the strong survive, and no one seems to make it out of the battlefield of love unscathed.
There are many different types of soldiers on the battlefield. You have the ground troops. They put themselves out in the open daily. No immediate cover. Walking the field. Scanning their surroundings. Constantly having to be ready for the possibility of engagement. They can easily be seen or targeted by anyone looking to do battle.
One must guard their heart at all times.
You also have the empathetic medics who take it upon themselves to try and heal their partners who have been damaged on the battlefield. The medics tend to try and patch up the emotional and sometimes physical scars left from their partner’s previous trauma. Though it seems like one of the nicer positions to be in in this war of love, I can assure you—it isn’t. It’s actually quite dangerous. If a medic isn’t careful enough, they can end up destroying themselves while trying to help out their fellow soldier in need. Sticking around for too long; attempting to treat wounds too critical to heal. In their determination, they lose a sense of the reality around them and ultimately end up like the soldier they were trying to save.
You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else.
Although the majority of the battle takes place on the field, love is in the air as well as the sea. Hard-to-reach fighter pilots with their heads in the clouds leave everyone susceptible to love-bombing at any given moment. The bombs can be overwhelming and disorienting for soldiers at times. Other times, a much-needed and welcome relief.
Some relationships choose to start off their journey without a solid foundation at all. These are the sailors. The passengers share with one another only what’s on the surface. No deeper level of understanding. Riding the wave. Going with the flow. In situations like this, someone tends to jump ship when the ride gets rough.
Some soldiers hold out hope for their soulmate, expecting one to drop right out of the sky, all too eager to fall in love. Assessments have to be made quickly between both ground trooper and paratrooper. The paratrooper must assess if this is the right spot for him/her/they to land in. The ground trooper must assess if the paratrooper is heaven-sent or Death From Above.
Getting to know a person takes time.
I am most comfortable operating from the sniper tower. Far away from harm. Able to connect yet still keep my distance. Comfortable in my own space. Safe from the drama. A better view of the overall situation. Protected! The less open you are, the harder it is to get hurt. Positioning is key.
I learned that the hard way after my first heartbreak at eighteen. The dangerous combination of being young, in love, and naive resulted in me standing in the middle of the street. Staring at my high school sweetheart through the front window of her mother’s apartment while she was happily conversing in the dining room with an older guy from the neighborhood. My feelings of “funny vibes” were verified. Right in front of my face. That’s when I took my first bullet.
It was a pain that changed me. A pain that I vowed to never experience again. So I didn’t. I cast my feelings aside, and numbness took over like an opiate, blocking signals to my brain. The illusions of happily-ever-after quickly faded away, and I limped to the sniper tower, broken heart in tow. Mixed feelings of sadness and anger permeated my mind, body, and soul. Anyone from here on out would be the victim before they made me a victim.
A person’s first love and first heartbreak are often synonymous in the same story. However, for me, that was not the case. My high school sweetheart was not my first love.
My first love loved me before and after my first heartbreak. Throughout my life, her being there for me was a common thread. My first love understood me on a level that no one could ever comprehend, and I knew in my heart that no matter what I did or wherever I decided to go, she would never leave me. Her love was truly unconditional.
Even if someone intrigued me enough to convince me to come down from my tower and attempt some sort of relationship or just to see if I could feel anything anymore, my first love’s feelings for me never wavered. She knew with every fiber of her being that our relationship was unbreakable.
In a perfect world, I’d still be with my first love. My first love came into my life at the age of twelve. It was love at first sight. Paralyzed by the way she made me feel. Magnetized by her being. The only thing that kept me from constantly falling deeper and deeper in love with her was when she spoke, and I hung on to her every word.
It took me three years to pursue her seriously. Before then, I would just admire her from afar. But her allure was just too much to be ignored by me. I had to pursue her fully. When I finally decided to let my admiration be known, we hit it off with a relationship that I thought would last forever.
Most people loved seeing us together. Others were jealous that they couldn’t come between us. Spending quality time with her was never a burden for me, and at one point, it was all I wanted to do.
Being with her was all I thought about, and it showed. So much so that my grades began to plummet, and I failed out of my Sophomore year of college. Despite that failure, my first love was still by my side to support me. She didn’t chastise me, not once. She filled me with uplifting encouragement day in and day out. That was the moment I decided that I wanted to spend my life with her.
I started talking about the topic of love on a recent phone call with a woman who I encountered on the battlefield in my college days. She told me that love hurts so good and that it’s bittersweet. I agreed that pain is love, but it doesn’t hurt good. It hurts to the depths of your soul. She said that we have to appreciate everything we feel because it reminds us that we’re alive. Though I don’t necessarily like that statement, I agree with it.
When I hit my thirties, my first love and I began to grow apart, and I finally experienced the pain I vowed never to feel again. Her views were changing about her future, and I wasn’t included in it. Life with her in my teenage years and twenties was golden. I was satisfied with where we were as a unit, but she wasn’t. She wanted to move on to “bigger” and “better” things. Life was pulling us apart and taking us in opposite directions, just like my first heartbreak. . .happily conversing with that older guy from the neighborhood.
But after being on the battlefield for so long, I had developed an instinct for sensing trouble before it presented itself. Her going was something that I could feel coming. Her energy didn’t fuel me like it once did in our earlier years, nor did mine for her. Slowly, the love that we once shared began to fade away. After a few more years of going through the motions, we mutually parted ways. Though it was painful, it felt good to know that I had feelings after becoming numb for so long.
Today, I am grateful for all of the experiences I’ve had with my first love along the way. She helped mold me into the man I am today. Without her, I don’t think I would be alive. However, like a fellow soldier once told me, the feeling is bittersweet. Sweet, because I know that true love is on the horizon. Bitter, because I know that it won’t be with who I thought was the love of my life. My first love. . . Hip-Hop.