I cheated...well sort of...

Okay, so I don't get to the movies as often as I would like anymore. All my potential movie dates have children, with the exception of one--she would rather go to a bar where people reenact their high school personas than go watch "Slumdog Millionaire"--anyhow, I digress...I found a site a few months ago called themoviespoiler.com where you can read a detailed synopsis of a movie instead of watching it. Today as I perused the internet I decided to check the site and see if any movies I felt like spoiling for myself were up and I was pleasantly surprised to find the spoiler for "He's just not that in to you". I wasn't sure I wanted to see it so I thought I would read the spoiler and decide (I want to see it by the way). I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, but a theme of the movie is "you have to find yourself, not someone else, before you can find true love" Cliched. Smarmy. Cheesy. Hallmarkish. And true.

I feel like lately life has been trying to impart some truth on me, and I think this is it. I was the little girl that grew up on All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital and a myriad of spanish telenovelas. I think somewhere inside my head I tricked myself in to believing that love isn't easy. Love is a long, hard fought journey and only after you have overcome all the obstacles are you allowed to be with your true love. I thought it meant finding someone else and accepting them and holding on no matter what. I was convinced that the princess would always be rescued by her prince after all the evil was vanquished. Then I fell in love. I hung on for dear life and rode out all the bumps along the road but something went wrong, because at the end of everything--the evil was not vanquished and I was without my prince. I didn't know what to do because at the end of the novela happiness abounded. Tad and Dixie always found their way back to each other. This wasn't supposed to happen.

But it did. It happened. It hurt. It was like no other pain I had experienced. And more importantly I knew that it was my fault because I must have missed something along the way. I must not have done something I was supposed to do, otherwise why would it have turned out so wrong? Something was wrong with me. At least that's what I thought then.

Which brings me back to the truth that life has recently imparted on me. I was listening to my Taylor Swift CD after I bought it and I listened to the song "White Horse"--in case you haven't heard it the main line is "I'm not a princess, this ain't a fairytale"--and I was overcome with a sense of sadness. I couldn't figure out why the song hit me so hard--until I was singing along with it one day and I realized why it was hard to listen to. Everything I had grown up believing about love and relationships was wrong. There was no formulaic route that a relationship had to take in order to achieve a happy ending. And maybe even when all the evil was vanquished it didn't mean that the prince loved the princess. And me? Was I princess? Damn straight I was (and still am)! I was not, however, a damsel in distress who needed rescuing at every turn. I was just me. Book nerd, English teacher, bitchin' accessorizer, ME.

Then I realized something else. Love shouldn't be hard. I know that all relationships will face their hard times, but maybe there is such a thing as too much. Perhaps love doesn't need a formulaic path of hardships before it is realized. Maybe love is really easy to find and we are just looking way too hard--maybe I'm looking way too hard, or maybe because I thought it was supposed to be so hard I just gave up looking at all.

So, that's where I'm at folks. One rather large realization and in the midst of overhauling my outlook and perspective on myself and on love. All in a Sunday's blog post.