This post was written by Andrea and I am honored to publish it here for her.

Love you, you wonderful wanderer.

   These feelings are always so strange and foreign to me, even though they are feelings that have constantly passed, like waves, through my mind. I can never figure out why they are always so hard for me to digest properly and why they return, over and over, no matter how many times I try to analyze them.  Like a lump in my throat I can’t seem to swallow. What is it about the constant pressure from society to settle down and procreate I can’t agree to, yet secretly a part of me longs for it?

   Maybe I have been designed to live a life most people don’t understand. A life that I don’t understand and that I can’t seem to figure out. A life of solitude with a  longing for things that simply no longer exist in the pure state I am looking for.

   So many days I wonder how it is possible that I can be surrounded by so many people yet feel completely alone. Searching the crowds of people for someone to hold me. To provide me with that sense of reassurance in life we are all looking for. Yet, I constantly struggle with the thought of being viewed as property.

   How can one be alone in a world filled with so many people?

  Is it me who simply chooses this and has driven myself to become accustomed to this life style? To driving those away who might actually be worth letting in? To not being able to accept the fact that, over time, love fades and what you are left with is a comfortable nothingness? And this is what love actually is – OR- is this where I belong in life? Is this how my path was written from the beginning? To travel this world alone searching for feelings  that aren’t real anymore? Seeking the true connection to another soul, never to find the one that was created solely for me?

   At times I am overwhelmed by the affection from suitors coming at me from all directions. Yet, I can’t seem to find that person whom I feel I share that desired connection with. Or the person whose affection I actually want to embrace and return as one “should”.

   Maybe this is because love doesn’t exist.  It’s a fantasy that from an early age we are taught to yearn for. Or perhaps it does exist and I’m just blind to it -OR- quite possibly I’m just a fool and can’t see it when it’s right I front of me. I’m so busy searching for a feeling yet I have no idea what the feeling actually feels like. Searching for this “idea” of love I have in my head. This “feeling”.

   How does one feel an idea, anyways? Is it even possible?  And then we come to the part of always wanting the ones that don’t admire us in return.  The ones that have no need for our affection.

   As I sit here, in the silence of an apartment that belongs to a man I flew 1/2 way around the world to to see, that I’ve spent the past 6 days with, yet we’ve barely managed to speak 6 full sentences to each other, I wonder, why is it I still merely desire his affection?

   The affection of a man who didn’t even have the courage to say goodbye to me when he left this morning, knowing that I’d be gone by the time he reached home, with no plans of returning anytime soon. A man who had no trouble expressing his desires with wandering hands in the dark of the night.  Yet, he is the one who’s affection I seek?

   I long to know how his day was spent. What he did. Who he may have met. Where he went. To sit and share a meal with him. To simply sit on the couch together letting the electricity of our connection bounce off one another’s skin. To hold his hand in silence or feel the protection of his arms wrapped around me in the middle of the night. To learn his desires, his passions, his dreams. To watch him sleep peacefully as my mind wonders imagining what he might be dreaming about.  To breath in the scent of his skin.  To keep the scent tucked away so I might be able to someday associate it to a distant memory in the far off future.  To do all that is necessary to foster a meaningful connection.  To know him and let him know me.

   The affection of a man who, to me, appears to be so lonely in life that I cannot understand  his unwillingness to return these desires or to acknowledge mine for him. To make the smallest amount of time for me when we only have a few short days together.

   Could it be possible his loneliness is contagious? Is this why, once again, I am struggling to digest these feelings that are flooding my mind? Filling my mind? Or maybe, as I stated earlier, maybe I am the lonely one. The one that is so lost in being alone that it is my feelings that are contagious. Trying to fit into the idea of a society that was not meant for me nor one that I fit into.

   There is never courage in running away, yet, time and time again, it seems like the best possible solution to me. Jump on a plane to a new destination.  Fill my life with new people and new culture. New experiences.  Maybe then these feelings will make sense? Maybe there my Prince Charming is waiting. Or maybe it is just another lonely place.

   Again, perhaps I am the one running from him. I do seem to be the one who is always running. The one unwilling to put in the extra work to make him see his importance to me. The one who is not capable of giving or receiving the proper affection and attention needed to sustain a relationship. Maybe, after being alone for so long, his wandering hands were the only way he knew to express his affection towards me and I didn’t give him a fair chance, rushing straight to judgement and rejection.

   On a side note, as I once again jet off to a new destination in search of something I am unsure exsists, the two beside me on the plane seem to be so madly in love with one another that I can’t help but have faith in a love like theirs, but for me.

   If love is to be seen in a spectrum, just as most emotions are, my empathy and experience have given me a broader view of the gravity and intensity love has to offer. I have seen heavy depths. The pressure in that dark sadness can truly turn coal into diamonds. I have seen humanity triumph from hopelessness, overcoming death and disease. Strangers raising forgotten souls from the dead. Children who were anonymous and unknown being given a chance at life from a person who grew up on the other side of the world using love to guide them to their good and philanthropic tasks. I’ve seen a variety and a vastness that many can’t comprehend and it has given me the burden of desire for a deep and heavy love. 

   Why would I lay that load on someone who couldn’t hoist it? My search will be harder but, in the end, I hope it finds me in a love more worthwhile. Real. Pure. Grand. Having nothing to do with proximity and common interests and everything to do with a spiritual connection and the true admiration of souls that see each other through the flesh and bone of bodies. A love that lives. One that’s eternal. One that exists now because it always has, outside of the temporary anatomy I was born into, in the realm of the everlasting subconscious that has endured over millenia and shall exsist in many forms until the end. A love that is both effortless and exhausting. Both immensely thick and heavy but, also weightless. One that stays outside societal parameters so it can carry it’s meaning through all of space and time as all unending things do.

   Something like that is the love I seek.

   Indulging in what my body craves does not satisfy my soul it merely quells the hunger pangs. It tides me over as I wait for the thing that will truly satisfy what this vessel’s soul is in search of.

   I have a thirst for a love with a lack of worldly conditions but a need for godly ideals.  It is filling and smooth and immediately recognized.  I want Mana from heaven not mcdonalds.  

   I have the patience. I have the determination. I have the knowledge of what I truly need.  But, the question that always lingers is, do I have the time in this body, in this place?  Do I have the time?  I have the courage but I must continue to pray for the sight so it doesn’t pass me by.