Circles and cycles and seasons
For everything there’s always reason
But it’s never good
Never turns out as it should
No one ever held you
No single moment of truth
But if you were mine
I would looked into those eyes
And said

Tell me the words
You long to hear
And I’ll sing them loud and clear
Let me heal the wounds
You’ve held on to for all these years
Break the cycle
Break the chains
Cause love is louder than all your pain
Than all your pain

You know, I’m shocked I haven’t used this song as inspiration sooner. I guess everything happens right on time. Today costar said “you deserve a great love.”

I sat in my back yard and stared at the trees pondering two things:

1. Do I deserve great love?
2. What defines great love?

Unfortunately that led me down a bit of a disappointing path. Do I deserve great love? fucking right. I think most people in this world deserve great love. But what defines great love?

To some people great love is how long you’ve been together, to others it’s how often you’re physically intimate. To me it’s neither.

No, see, I know great love isn’t defined by time because I look at my parents, and that isn’t great love. I didn’t really realize this until a year ago, but my dad isn’t like a good husband, or a good dad. The good dad part I found out when he abandoned me to do heroine, but the good husband part I didn’t find out until I finally started understanding myself, loving myself, having value in myself, and beginning to wonder what I want out of my next romantic relationship. That’s how I discovered that my dad is not a good husband or a good partner, and maybe I wasn’t in the past either. Different reasons of course. My dad is controlling, and jealous, and obsessive, and suffocates my mom. My mom is so lost in it after 30+ years together that I genuinely don’t think she sees how bad it is. I’m none of those things. I’ll never control a woman in any sense, anyone that I want to be with, well I want to be with them because of who they are. If I start trying to control who they are or what they do they lose the thing that made me fall in love with them, and that just feels strange.

I’m not jealous because if you think you can find a better partner, I want you to go do that. I’m not saying I’m some knight in shining armor, but at the end of the day, any woman my age would be lucky to be with someone like me because let’s face it, most men my age are kind of selfish dipshits, I know I used to be one. So if you think there’s better out there, go get it, I wish you nothing but love and luck in that pursuit.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “breaking the cycle” recently, I guess for me breaking the cycle becomes about breaking the cycle in a lot of different parts of life.

As a man I want to be a better man than my dad was. I’m not sure what that fully means yet because I’m not sure if I’ll get married or have kids, but for now it looks like being an honest, vulnerable man who takes care of the people around him. Who protects those who cant protect themselves, and just does good things, not because you want to be seen as a good person, but because doing good things for people feels good. My dad’s always been angry, bitter, grumpy. He yells a lot and swears a lot. I’ve been known to say fuck quite a bit but I don’t get that bitter disposition anymore. Life’s fun, sure sometimes shitty things happen, but they happen to everyone so move on the best you can.

I also know great love isn’t defined by physical intimacy either because, some of the people I’ve found to be the most beautiful in my life, I’ve never been physical with.

I think we’re at this weird place in society where people only know how to be vulnerable by taking their clothes off, but the truth is for most people it’s easier to take their clothes off than it is to talk about their traumas, let someone really understand why they are who they are.

I think great love starts with a connection, you meet a person you can see yourself being friends with, as time and space move, so does your perception of this person. Great love comes from being able to be open and honest about anything without fear of judgment, or fear that something you might say will change the relationship. Great love comes from the patience of taking the time to learn someone, what makes them excited in life, what makes them scared, what their anxieties are, their insecurities. I think great love in learning who someone is all the way to the core, knowing that they have their issues, and their flaws and still waking up and choosing to love them anyways. I believe great love is a love you don’t give up on under any circumstance. It’s a love you fight for, and you work at day in and day out.

We’ve all been in relationships, every day is not a great one, and if it is you’re probably not in an open and honest relationship.

I guess I wanna break the cycle of controlling love, people not putting the effort into healing, and not putting the effort into understanding yourself and healing yourself so that you can be a good partner to someone.

Is it all truly broken?
Irreparable mistakes
Let’s take our time
Don’t we have to try?

Where the skies are gold not gray,

J.