Romantically Challenged

"Good Lord, he broke all my shields..."

A long time ago, in a faraway land, there was a girl whose little teen heart got broken. Same old story, right? She had been getting her hopes up about something that was going nowhere, but she did not know that at the time. Or maybe she didn't want to. She believed, and wished with all she had, that things would work out in the end. But they didn't. And soon enough she found herself lost, lonely and empty as she could be.

That girl has since then done a lot of growing up. She's learned, without even wanting to, to not trust and give her heart away to the wrong people. The problem is that it's hard to draw a line between wrong and right. Real life villains don't wear black cloaks or carry around dangerous weapons. Nobody warns you beforehand that they might break you if you let them. That's exactly why some people build walls around themselves: you never know who wants to be let in for all the good reasons and who will shoot you straight through the heart as soon as they have the chance. I built the thickest wall around my own heart and, apparently, my ability to get attached to people as well. It was unconsciously that I did so and for a long time I didn't know it was there. I got so used to it that I thought it was normal - you know, just good ol' me being cautious.

All that leads me directly to my next and main point: that wall might be the reason why it really takes a lot for me to like somebody in a serious way. Surely I have lots of "crushes" (I do take the public transport every day and the Train Crush is definitely a thing), but getting to me is not the easiest thing. I want to make clear that it does not mean, in any way or form, that I play hard to get - I absolutely, 100% don't. I am so extremely cautious with people and I tend to overthink and over-worry so much that it is just difficult. But as some may or may not know, the last few months of 2013 were not exactly the highlight of my existence, and so when this new year started I decided to let myself go a little bit, have more fun, stop worrying so damn much. And somewhere along the line I let my guard down.

Very often people don't need to do anything special to get to us. No, not even to my kind. Sometimes it's just what they laugh about, what you hear them say, their bad puns or just the way they seem to be around people. It really does not take much more than that and then - boom, you're doomed. Sometimes you just know the moment you see them. Sometimes it's a progressive realization. And sometimes it just hits you, at the most random times, and you understand that you've known all along. (The next step is telling your friends, who will probably go wait-what on you because you've kept your cool for a few weeks before being really sure of what's happening. Because let's face it, it is happening.)

In the words of Mhairi McFarlane in one of my favourite books I've read this year, You Had Me at Hello...

So there you go. My first serious, oh-god-he's-looked-at-me-I'm-blushing kind of crush in about three years. I wrote most of this post over a month ago and I still feel pretty much the same about it, except that with each passing day I feel a bit more pathetic. I'm starting to think that in some ways I am more attracted to the idea of being able to like someone than I am to the guy himself - but then again, that may just be the passing of time working its magic. I guess we'll never know. At the end of the day, it all comes down to the same thing. You fall, you don't have the guts to speak up and suddenly there's no "right time" because there is no time at all. 

Tania x

 @taniagatz