Afraid

I don’t even know where to start. I have to admit that this is something that I have been afraid of for a long time now. I guess my whole life… Or at least my whole adult life anyway.

But I guess I should try to start at the beginning. Although a very muddled beginning it is…

So I’m reading a new book. It’s about vampires (sorry, no Anne Rice here). There is a girl in the book who falls in love with a vampire (a good one, he doesn’t feed on humans, but on other animals instead) and he has fallen in love with her. But he doesn’t know what to do about it because part of him wants to feed off of her and part of him wants to protect her from any harm ever. Anyway, I was reading this part where they were sitting in a meadow (apparently in this vampire tale, they can come out in the daytime, just not on super bright sunny days because it makes them sparkle, but it doesn’t hurt them. But I digress…) and they were trying to figure out how they could be together. He didn’t want to be too close to her because it was too much of a temptation but she does want to be near him as long as being near him doesn’t cause HIM too much pain or difficulty. So eventually they come to a point where he kisses her. Now, I have to say that I have read my share of romance novels, bodice rippers, and “adult” novels, but I have never read anything that has stirred me as much as this has. And not in the way that your typical “romance” scene in a book will, but tugging at your loins and making you wish you weren’t alone (or making you run up the stairs and tackling your significant other – even if it is battery powered), but by just making me long to be in that same meadow and just reach out and kiss our hero myself. And it isn’t that it is intensely written, or that it has just been so long since I’ve kissed anyone (although it has been), it just provoked a sense of longing in me.

Now, at the risk of temping fate, bringing down the wrath of the universe, provoking the Gods (choose your own deity here), jinxing myself, or simply casting the harsh light of reality to shine even more brightly on me then it does now, I’m going to answer the question that is on your mind:

So why then does this make me afraid?

Because I am (and like I said, always have been) afraid that I will never feel that way about anyone. But I think I’m even more afraid that no one will ever feel that way about me. I have to admit that I have been watching way too many “chick flicks” lately. Things like 27 Dresses, PS I Love You, Mama Mia, and yes, even Enchanted, that I wonder if I’ll ever be as happy as the women were in those movies when they were with their men. OK, so they weren’t necessarily happy before meeting their guys, and in the case of PS I Love You she was very sad when she lost her guy. And all in all these women were self confident, successful women in their own right without a man (well, maybe not in Enchanted but she eventually figured herself out and became a strong woman at the end) so that is the secrete to finding a good man??? I don’t know. Hell, I lost my train of thought here. I guess my point is that I KNOW I don’t need a man to make my life complete, or to make me happy, but damnit it sure would be nice to have one around. To feel that way about someone.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve felt passion, and lust, and desire, and even love for some of the men that I’ve kissed. I’ve even been kissed so passionately that I was out of breath and my thighs were quivering so much that I didn’t know if I’d be able to stand on my own two feet. But I’ve never felt the kind of intense love, desire, and passion all rolled into one that women in fiction ever feel. I mean, I have to ask, does anyone ever really feel like that? Or did I feel like that and just missed it because I was too preoccupied with thinking about something else? Did I miss my chance at Mr. Right because I was being my usual unobservant self and being totally unaware of my surroundings?

Harry Connick Jr. had a line in PS I Love You where he told Hilary Swank’s character “I want to be someone’s Jerry.” Well, Harry, I know how you feel. I want to be someone’s female version of Jerry. And I want a Jerry. Yes, I know Jerry died in the movie, but before he did, he and Hilary’s character shared this deep love for one another that I can’t even fathom happening in real life. I mean, SOMEONE SOMEWHERE had to have felt something like this to have been able to write it down for the first time, or else they had a great imagination, and every other author has just reworded this love. Can that really be the case? Or am I just missing out on something?

And furthermore, am I the only person who feels this way? Am I the only one who wonders if true love really exists? There are characters in books who feel like this, but they always find love in the end. So when do I get my “Happily Ever After?” Is it too much to ask for something like that to happen to me while I’m still young enough to enjoy it?

And why am I dwelling on this when I have bigger fish to fry, like FINDING A JOB?

I’m going to go and read some more now. I’m only half way through the book, and I know that there is more to come because I reading the first and the fourth just came out.