I know you guys know the song.

Imagine me and you
I do
I think about you day and night
It’s only right to think about the girl you love
and hold her tight
So happy together

Blah blah blah.

I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you
For all my life
When you’re with me, baby the skies’ll be blue
For all my life

I wish that last part were true, but eh, life is so far from a fairy tale.

But we used to try, didn’t we, love? It has only been a handful of years, and yet it seems we’ve grown so far from those carefree days. Recently, I’ve found myself missing them more often.

—–

It occurs to me that the best way to move through Life is by determining a set of standards for one to live by. The danger in this lies in two places: first, being susceptible to imposing these standards on others, and second, not providing one’s self the room to adapt.

The principles I live by are harsh and unyielding. It would be terribly unfair of me to expect from others the same kind of strenuous mental/emotional restraint I require of myself. Emotions are wild. And while they are natural, they usually tend to be at odds with reason. If I have become anything, I am certainly a reasonable gal. Being such necessitates a certain amount of control over my feelings. There is a fine line, a heavy balancing act, that one must acknowledge between allowing emotions to run amok and suffocating them until they implode.

From an early age I have known this, but my problem when I was younger was that I had too strict an adherence to my own standards. The world is not purely inhabited by extremes; rather, there is a wide spectrum of variables. I consider this an inherent part of existence, and yet it took me a long time to take this to heart. Rules or principles are useless if they no longer apply. Be wary of convincing yourself otherwise. This hard lesson was learned when I was thousands of miles away from anyone who really knew me.

These lead me to two fears that basically fuel my perspective of life. Because I am so calculated, I often feel that I am not being emotionally true to myself. I hold myself back in so many situations simply because it is easier to maintain control this way.

Perhaps my greatest fear is that one day I may wake up with a Life I never really wanted. When I was still at Santa Monica College, I took a philosophy of religion course with a professor who loved to tell anecdotal narratives. One day she decided to tell us about her old mentor. This woman seemed to have it all: a gorgeous family, a devoted husband, a fabulous house and the respect and admiration of many. Despite the fact that she had everything that everyone else seems to strive for, she was terribly unhappy. One day she drove herself to a hotel with a covered parking lot, used cash to check into a room, and took a number of pills. She overdosed. She chose this hotel so it would be difficult to find her car in the parking lot before it was too late.

This is an extreme case, but it illustrates to me the dangers of being untrue to yourself. And I’ve vowed that that woman will never be me.

—–

But, oh, the risks involved. It would be so much easier if I had someone willing to come along for the entire ride.

—–

And for some god-awful reason, using block quotes screws with the leading of the rest of the text. Damn typography.

(via snip-snap-beep.blogspot.com)