Thursday, February 18, 2010

Young love…full of promise, full of hope…ignorant of reality!

Seeing as how the infamous V-Day fell on a weekend this year, Friday’s mood at school was all about hearts and flowers, cards and candy grams all stating “Will you be my Valentines?” Young love…full of promise, full of hope…ignorant of reality!

As I was in class, one of the students comes up to and says “Miss Diaz I am on a serious mission today!” curious as I am I ask him to explain this serious mission he is undertaking…he proceed to explain how there is this girl that he likes that just happens to attend a neighboring school. He wants to impress her and decided that during lunch he is going to rush over to her lady friends’ school and drop off a bouquet of roses and a homemade card (yesss I said HOMEMADE)…

What a well thought out plan! So I stated that this young lady must be really special for him to go to all this fuss. There was no hesitation in his “YES”…”I have saved my lunch money for days just to get her the flowers and my cousin is coming over to drive me to her school.”…

This young man went out of his way to MAKE this girl a card, with construction paper and markers, which expressed how he felt about her. He saved his lunch money for days in order to buy her flowers. He made his cousin pick him up during lunch so that he could go surprise this young lady. All to ask her to “be my Valentines”…
I asked him if he thought that he would always be this detailed and romantic…again, there was no hesitation in his “YES” reply…”I have always been like this and will always be like this”….

Young Love…Full of Promise, Full of Hope…Ignorant of Reality…or is it that we as adults are just a little more skeptical and jaded???

Maybe we are skeptical and a bit jaded…but it wasn’t always like this; I remember that feeling of butterflies in my stomach, waking up to the thought of someone and falling asleep with that person in my thoughts. Listening to Boyz II Men songs and just getting lost in my own thoughts. There are countless diary entries to prove that I was once part of that “Young Love, Full of Promise, Full of Hope, Ignorant of Reality” crowd…

But man has it been a while!!

What is it that has happened since those days that has made me a little more skeptical about the explosion of Love??

Life.

Life has happened. That life that has lead to this entry in which I reminisce about first Loves and first heartbreaks, which in a way go hand in hand. With maturity comes experiences, good choices, bad choices, maybe a regret or two or three…but all of these things equate to growth and wisdom. We learn from experiences. Once we make a bad choice we learn not to make it again, right? Well not exactly! When it comes to emotions and matters of the heart, sometimes we choose to gamble over and over. I’ve gambled and lost many times. Each loss brings feelings of frustration and disillusion; those feelings only lead to questioning why the hell I keep putting myself in the line of fire!!

My answer to that: Because That Line of Fire Has Yet to KILL Me!!! Has it hurt? Yes. Do I feel like closing my heart off from potential pain? Yes. Has it at times made me feel comfortably numb? Yes. Have I lost my faith in Love? NO! How can I not believe that One Day It Will All Make Sense!!!
I am a Warrior in this insanity of a life.

Paulo Coelho said it best:

For the warrior there is no such thing as an impossible love.
He is not intimidated by silence, indifference or rejection. He knows that, behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.
This is why the warrior takes more risks than other people. He is constantly seeking the love of someone, even if that means often having to hear the word 'No', returning home defeated and feeling rejected in body and soul.
A warrior never gives in to fear when he is searching for what he needs. Without love, he is nothing.


I talk so much about this because these are the types of experiences that life has thrown my way. How can I not let my pen bleed?!?!?!

Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be so hard. But this is what it’s about!!

The wisdom to know that even though it will never be exactly the same as what I experienced as a youthful teenager; the “butterfly in the stomach” feelings are part of the endless possibilities!

I truly hope that that student never loses that enthusiasm for the possibility of Love! I’m sure that he will endure feelings of frustrations and disillusions, but to this day No One Has Ever Died From A Broken Heart!

I can’t help but reminisce about the first and only real time I fell in love that coincided with the first and only real time I truly experienced a broken heart.

Time has left a mark that can’t be erased.

Hope keeps us going but the pain stays to remind us and to motivate us. {Well said Mr. Blake}