RISK IS RELATIVE

After being single for so long, I had come to believe that I wasn't missing anything. We have all been burned in love; the relationship that was over way before it ended, and continued its stronghold even after it ended. This isn't a new story. Everyone has their crazy relationships; the one that made you both psycho. In retrospect you ask yourself, "What the fuck was I thinking? Am I that weak? Did I really let that go on for that long?" After a year of emphatically saying that I would never date anyone again, no matter how well I thought I knew someone, I was still taken completely by surprise by someone who made me forget that I was ever scared in the first place. In my previous relationship (the one that damaged me) I was never really comfortable. If you know what I'm talking about, then you know how much that sucks. I was always on edge; always thinking that if I did this thing or that thing, then I would be ridiculed or talked down to. If I went out with my friends, there would be the “who were you cheating on me with?” altercation. I was too smart to do that stupid thing; too smart to drink that much; too cute to let myself be this "chunky"; too “this” or too “that.” When, in the third year of our relationship, I asked this person why he had never invited me home with him for the holidays, he informed me that he wasn't going to have his family meet me until he was "sure of me". Fucking “sure of me.” In the third fucking year! Are you fucking kidding me? And now, there is this man; a man who eclipses anything I have ever known, dreamed about, or believed there could be. Someone who is comfort and familiarity. Someone who feels natural and right. Someone who is kind and generous and polite. Someone who holds my hand in public, and calls to ask me how my day is. Someone who makes me dinner and brings me chocolate chip cookies for no reason. Someone who encourages me when I undertake the task of stopping smoking. Someone who rubs my feet after I work an eleven-hour day, and wakes me up from a bad dream. Someone who tells me that I am beautiful, and I can tell from the look in his eyes when he says the words that there isn't a "but you would be more beautiful if--" lingering back in his brain. There is faith and hope and trust now, where there used to be only cynicism, fear and bitterness. And still, there is risk. But suddenly that risk is relative. And that makes the world a beautiful place again.