Lost In Love

I have been contemplating this particular blog for some time. A few years to be exact. I just didn’t know how to word, it or even how to be truly transparent with it honestly. I guess I actually was unable to pull all the thoughts together in my mind until very recently.

Having freshly come out of a “situation” that threw me for a loop, I decided to take some time off to truly assess a lot of things internally. Along the way I sat back to both watch, and also talk to my close girlfriends about many heartfelt things that had been going on with me, for some time. Within my circle I am usually the

sen·sei so to speak if that makes sense. I'm the one that has a quick answer when queried for advice, even when I know that I myself many times, don’t take my own. I am one that also holds things close to me, only revealing when my little box has become too full and is damn near bursting at the seams. It’s not that I try to hide things from others or that I am overly secretive. I am just very slow to share. I can admit without question that I have major issues with allowing myself to be vulnerable to anyone. Not even to those whom I know to love me the most. I guess that is why this particular article was so hard for me to piece together, let alone reveal to others. Even now I am rambling but hey, that is what I do, right? I compartmentalize everything until I can’t hold it any longer, then I write out my feelings and decide hey, why not tell the whole damn world what you're thinking so it won't sit so heavily on you.

Now, as I am navigating my once again single life, I sit and listen with so much joy knowing that a few of my girlfriends have now found the happiness we all have sought. They are winning for some of us still anxiously, yet patiently seeking our person. I open and honestly share with them their joys in having found great brothers that possibly may bring permanence in their lives. Being the awesome women that they are, they are so deserving of every iota of happiness the universe blows their way and I want to make sure to add some extra positive energy that is sometimes missing when girlfriends give way to relationships and the circle starts to decrease physically. I never understood the resentment that some women receive from their girlfriends when they find a mate and can't hang out and kick it like they once did. I mean, isn't that what we are all searching for?

Our Mondays are now spent catching up on their exciting weekend activities with their boo’s. Giddily we laugh over talks of romantic dates, quick weekend getaways, couples retreats, combined family activities, and hosted parties. All I can do is smile with sincere joy in my heart praying that they have come to their final chapters in books that have been pre-written with an ending of Happily Ever After.

Still, so often I want to ask, how are you all managing “The Balance”. Many times in my past, I have been ferociously on a focused road of finishing my books, working out to the point of feeling like a fitness guru (looking down at my fupa thinking to myself - yeah that shit hasn't happened in some years though); paying down debt, buying new cars, moving into new homes, playing kickball, and trying to figure out if at this stage in life I want to return to finish my Bachelors. A herd of Ted Turner steed on his 590,000 acres*yes, it really is that big because I just pulled it up on Google*, farm – couldn’t have stopped me from reaching my goals at one point in my life. If you ever thought for a second that you could get in my way, I’d unleash the worst lethal dose of Scorpion venom known to man with words so cutting Gingsu would rename their entire brand - CHLOE. Don’t ask me to do anything, go anywhere, or even for my phone number because I’m trying to be THAT BITCH and anything else was minute in my world.

Those times of being most fruitful were – dare I admit it……..when I was…..alone. Better yet let me change that. They were at full throttle when I was nursing a broken heart. I came to realize this a few years ago when I finally finished my books, Like A Boss, which I have since changed the name to Sex, Drugs, and Stripclubs. I’d been working on this book since 1998 until I fell in love in 1999. Picked it back up in 2002 after becoming UN-engaged, then put it back down in 2003 when love came ambushing my heart again. The completion came after finally ending a six-year relationship that kinda dragged on for two more, that was sweeter than bitter yet ended nevertheless.

Once it was completed, my ex called me out about it saying, “Clo I’m proud of you, but I had been on you to finish that book the whole time we were together. I would get mad at you for not finishing. Now, here it is that we are not together and you finally did what I supported you on the whole time we were together.” At that moment I had to sit inside myself and be honest. I’m one of those chicks that get lost having a hard time finding a point of congruence when it comes to being in love and keeping the same momentum of pushing ME, towards my goals. Hard to believe for some but even harder to admit to myself, I am at my best when I don’t have a man around. The penis seems to make me lose focus and I end up dickmatized. I start to lose the “I’s” and replace them with mostly “we’s”, finding myself turning him into my BAD HABIT, so to speak.

Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? In essence, it truly is. No one should become so much of your everything that you lose yourself, so focused on them that you allow your own dreams to fall by the wayside. Because honestly, we women do it often whereas men, not nearly as much. Men are going to get in their male bonding with other men. Men are going to get in their “me time”, regardless of how much we piss and moan and whine. They are going to ride their motorcycles, attend sporting events, smoke their cigars with their boys, and have no females allowed conversations. They are going to shut down and focus and expect us to understand that it has nothing to do with their love for us and yes, they do want to be with us but right now, for the moment, what they are focused on is more important and know that we are going to still be there. And they should expect it and we should be. And love them even more for it.

We women, however, either allow him to consume all of our attention and time, or we are constantly adjusting and readjusting our schedule to accommodate wanting to bask as much as we can with being lost in love. Oh, y'all don't do that, huh? It's just me? Um....ok.

But, even worse, is that we will push for a lot of his time and shun doing what we were doing before he came along – again, lost in love. And as we are doing so, we tend to not even realize that all of our conversations surround him. All of our thought processes are adjusted and realigned with his. His truths become our truths. His ideas become our ideas. His wants are our wants. His goals are our goals. Not saying that this was me. I’m still defiant as hell if you can believe that. But these things do occur with us women sometimes as we become lost in love. Things we were so excited about before, become too cumbersome to try and navigate and get in enough time and attention with and from, him. We lose our ability to find THE BALANCE. Then by the time we realize what has happened, it’s either after a heart-crushing breakup or upon waking up one day to realize that all the things we should have done or could have done, the time has flown by and we have yet to accomplish because we were so consumed with being in love with him. That is when the resentment sets in when in reality; it is no one’s fault but our own.

You all may remember me saying a while back that I just wanted to put love on hold for five years so that I could focus on completing my goals. I need to finish about 10 book ideas I’ve started but not completed. I am a few credits shy of my Bachelor's Degree. I still haven’t made that trip to Belize or let my toes tickle the sands of Aruba. Pulling up to the door of 51 I find myself more focused these days. New digs. Up and down weight. New hairdo. A somewhat new whip. A few pages shy of completing not one but two books. And yet now I find myself intensely afraid to open my heart to new possibilities of having a boo. Why? Don’t know if I have yet figured out how to NOT be Lost In Love.

But how crazy would that be? To obtain your successes and yet as Billy Dee Williams stated in Mahogany, come to the realization that….Success is Nothing Without Someone You Love to Share It With.

I wonder if I am the only one that has come to realize that I am bad about getting, “Lost In Love”. Or, am I just the only one that can admit my weaknesses and now that I recognize them, push myself harder to find the equilibrium? I don’t know how, but I got to find a way to figure this thing out.

But I guess the great thing about me being where I am right now is that I am not lost……I’m on a clear path with not a damn detour nowhere in sight!

Love, Chloe