Admitting truths...

Where to begin...?

I am 26 years old. I have a great career, am well-educated and come from a long line of women just like me. Let's see: my grandmother was married, had 7 children and was then widowed. My mother was never married, raised four girls all the way through advanced educations and died with no grandchildren. Mind you, I am the youngest of four girls. Yes, I did say I was 26. I love my sisters. I look up to them as role models of women that I need to be emulate, or at least copy flatteringly. My sisters are gorgeous; true magnificent women of virtue. They are wildly intellectual. Two of them are teachers and one is a network engineer. I will refrain from discussing their personal lives in detail because, as I mentioned, I am the youngest of four and I really don't want to get my ass kicked. Anyway, my sisters are stupefyingly beautiful. I am the shortest in my family, standing at 5'8", and we are all veritable "chips off the old block", considering that my mother was a model and startlingly gorgeous herself. Please excuse my mild arrogance; I must give credit where credit is due...and I can't lie, we are some dime pieces! To support my point, I will venture to say that I come from a line of tall, beautiful, black Amazonian women; all ambitious, strong, and probably...independent to a fault. 

I can't say that I view it as a bad thing that none of my sisters are married with children. I firmly believe that none of us would have achieved our professional goals to date if we'd taken different life paths and married early or borne children before we were prepared. I stress this point simply because I am 26 years old and have come to realize that my desire to be married has hit me hard, like a lightning bolt in 2010. I realize that a large number of women my age are probably in this very same boat and I want to accentuate this fact: I don't want to be married for the wedding. I would actually prefer to forgo a wedding. Who needs the huge expense when all you're really doing is spending a grip to feed a bunch of people for ONE day. If I MUST have a wedding, however, I would prefer to just show up, do the darned thing and get God's stamp of approval on it, then whisk off with my new husband to a secluded island where we can share our first moments together as a ring around Jesus. 

But-- I digress. Like I said, I don't want to get married to have a wedding. I want to be married because I feel like having a man request your hand in marriage is the ultimate display of desire for you. Isn't it human nature to want to be wanted? I've heard the arguments about loving yourself (check) and being enough by your own standards, but I cannot ignore the innate desire to be desired on much more than a basal, physical level. Despite the fact the 52% of marriages end in divorce in this unbridled day and age (yes, I, too, am bewildered at this daunting statistic), I still hold on to the small hope that I will be able to find the man that God has designed for me and my purposes in this worldly place. I pray that he and I will serve God together and lead lives that we can look back on when we are sitting with the group of dried up old farts at the ripe old age of 90 and say, "We will see you soon, Lord. It has been a wild ride and we are ready to come home". 

I fully understand that 26 is still fitfully young and I have several fruitful years left, as the old adage goes, but like the wedding thing, I don't have a craving to be a mother...not right now at least. My mother had me when she was 34 years old, so I don't believe the hype and mumbo-jumbo about missing your "healthy child-bearing years". If I am 50 and still physically able to have a child, and still WANT a child, dammit, I will have a child. Argue your medical expertise if you will. I invite you to do so. I feel that I am really ready to be married. I am ready to love. In fact, I'm so full of love that I'm ready to explode unless the right, worthy, man can come along and give me an emotionally, physically and spiritually healing release. 

My fault, however, lies in the fact that in the past, when I have loved, it has been all-consuming, self-abandoning love. I do not share this pridefully, but I can honestly say that I have lost myself in love before. I have loved myself into madness and resentment and hated myself for it after the object of my affections finally exhausted of my unrelenting, torrential downpour of all of me. I notice that I do not often heed the boundaries that I now know real love and relationships must have. Since I was 16 years old, a meager year after I started my period, I have been entwined with a guy. I quickly became infatuated with him and this infatuation lasted a total of 9 years, with several maturation breaks in between. 

Looking back at the breaks in this whirlwind relationship, which by the way saw me handing over my virginity prematurely, I see the trend I started at my sweet 16 birthday party, on March 31, 2000, repeating itself over and over with several of the "in-between" guys. The guys who I ran into during my rebound periods. The guys I so desperately  hoped would somehow pleasantly surprise me and be the saving grace that I needed to finally put an end to the relationship of my teenage years. It usually went something like this: If you are lucky enough to happen upon my undiscriminating love, you can have EVERYTHING in the can of ME. You can have what cash I have in pocket and bank account, my unfaltering support and encouragement, my time (even the time that should be reserved for family, friends and self), my body, my car...whatever I have is yours. Yes, I am ashamed to admit this, but the name of this post is "Admitting truths", right? 9 times out of 10, in fact, most guys I ran through came out better than they were before they met me. Either they learned to balance their finances, made an A in a college course for which I probably wrote their exit essays, or strengthened a relationship within their own families because I wanted them to be as strong and vital as possible if they were with me. At the very least, they were better men for the next women they encountered simply because they already knew what a woman stripped to her bare minimum looked like. If any of you are reading this now -- and you know who you are -- please silently admit this fact. I can think of only one guy who is an exception to this. If I were any less blessed at this 26 year old point in my life, I would name names, but...I'll pass on that shallow satisfaction. 

At this point, you have a bit of background information about me and my chaotic rendezvous with love...to date. I hope that you will revisit my blog and walk with me through this journey of purging. I hope that, whether you are young and just getting started with your lovely rendezvous, or already in the midst of it, you can find some piece of solace in knowing that you are not alone. Maybe soon we can hear your outpouring, too :-)