Remember when you found out that the fat ass in the red suit was just one big lie your parents told you? Well, until your friend on the playground in kindergarten exploited it that is. This was one of many slaps in the face good ‘ol reality gave you.. Kind of sucks doesn’t it?

I’ve been getting that figurative “slap” on a seemingly regular basis for quite some time now. Turning twenty three years old forced me to reflect on this life I’ve thrown together in the time I’ve been fortunate enough to have. I’ve experienced so many things that most people may never get the chance to. Some things in my life have been amazing, others have been terrible, but all have taught me so much.

If I can take a moment to be so cliche and regurgitate the line, “things aren’t always what they seem,” you will mostly likely agree with this statement to some extent. The problem is, I’m beginning to realize almost EVERYTHING is NOT the way we perceive it to be. This poses quite the predicament when you become suddenly aware of what things in life are “supposed” to be and how the actually are. The word that best sums up my own perception lately would be disappointment. Perhaps that same disappointment when you found out Saint Nick and his reindeer were complete and utter bullshit.

Let’s focus this ideology on a more specific example (another cliche one at that) and talk about love. Don’t get me wrong, love does exist and can indeed be unconditional, but it’s not as common as Hollywood wants us to believe. You’ve watched The Notebook, the bar has been set, true love is dying in a hospital bed with that significant other, in perfect unison as you exit your bodies and proceed to eternity sharing the warm, dying embrace from which you came. As bluntly as I can say it, if you live your life with those expectations for love and happiness, you’re in for a HUGE fucking let down.

Sure, it’s possible… My parents have been together for almost 30+ years, meeting in 7th grade and being side by side for decades now. That to me, is the definition of “love.” Love is a word we carelessly spew out of our mouths at any circumstance we see appropriate.  Love the way my parents share is not as common as the love we fabricate when things with the opposite gender (or same perhaps for some of you) seem to be going good. We’ve been so conditioned by films and novels to believe that love at first site, the fireworks, and the fairy-tales, happen all the time. I’m here to tell you they DON’T.  Our expectations have been skewed and reshaped into an impractical image of what love and happiness should be. I’ve become aware that there is a very drastic difference between true love and that which most of us pretend to be experiencing.

The evidence supporting this claim would be that anyone who has ever had their heart broken, who couldn’t sleep, who has lost someone whom they felt they couldn’t function without, (insert other desperate, sappy, emo shit here) we ALL can conclude, under most circumstances, that time fixes everything. Often, we look back on those relationships and say, “What the fuck was I thinking?.”  Which makes me ponder this thought… IF, within any reasonable amount of time, a person can go from being completely lost and devastated (“Dude, she was the one. How can I live, breathe, function without her Josh?!) to a state of stability and appear completely unaffected by that person whom they “love”, was it really as serious as they had originally thought? Was it really true love? Was he/she the one?

I’ll post another entry about my thoughts on the soul mate topic, but continuing…

My point is this… There is a way we think things should work out and then there is a way things actually do unfold. I’ve started viewing my figurative “glass” as half empty, thus, eliminating any chance of a letdown. Once you stop waiting for those fireworks to come, you won’t be so upset when they don’t and consequentially, if they do indeed blow up the fucking sky, you’ll be even that more appreciative.

Don’t let the movies you watch, stories you hear, and books you read, shape your image of how relationships work. If you applied this logic to every aspect of life, at this current period in pop culture, we’d all be vampires sucking the blood from one another. Agreed?

x

(this sangria and I apologize for errors, coma splices, improper tenses, and run on sentences above)