This ritual is exhausting

There's a saying that goes, it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all. I have not lost all hope yet that this isn't true but I am drawing quite close. The heart is such a complex organ that can be given away time and again and still have more left to be given. It is truly wondrous. Yet while my heart is still capable of loving, it hasn't yet become cold and bitter, I am not sure it can take much more of the pain which rejection and the lack of reciprocated feelings brings. My heart is a fickle thing though, I guess she gets what she deserves. Most of the men she has given herself too never gave any indication that they felt anything for her beyond what the bounds of their friendship provided. But she, no, she had to jump out of herself time and again and get tangled in a web all on her own. Egged on nonetheless by a mind that's not much smarter than she is.

Quite a combination those two...the heart and the mind. They are at the core of their own unraveling, yet they never learn. They didn't learn after that time in secondary school, when they made her write that note to the random guy in class who never even acknowledged her feelings. They never learned after that time in her early twenties when they prompted her to write that other note to the random guy who was her good friend at the time, who also never acknowledged her feelings for him. They never learnt when she bared her soul to the very dear friend who made her feel so special and then took her heart and literally dashed it to the ground. It didn't learn in her mid twenties when she thought she had found the one who was the end of the line. The pieces of the heart, she puts back together as best she could and while they never really go back to the way they were before, they still have the propensity to love. BUT IT STILL DOESN'T LEARN. Those reckless cohorts were at it again in her late twenties, giving it all up...well giving itself fully to one who was there from childhood. One whom she thought was worth it after all. Guess what, they were both wrong and they all suffered in the end, the heart, the mind and the one within whom they exist most of all. 

She came quite close to quitting that time. Throwing in the towel and just reconciling herself to the fact that maybe it was best to not love at all, because she was becoming pro at the loving and losing game. But those 

conniving, deceptive little gremlins not only have the propensity to love but they have an overwhelming gift of giving her hope. Hope that better will come, hope that around the corner she is going to find him, she is going to meet the one worth her time, effort and energy. This is the one thing that drives her. The one factor that has ensured her not losing it all, just yet. The one thing which after all the years of loving and losing, after all the years of making her feel as if she was not worth it to them, keeps her sane. 

And as she neared her thirties, hope made her see in him, what maybe isn't even there. He made her feel he was worth her time and then when her heart and mind, very hesitantly now (they were learning) started getting to a point where maybe, just maybe she could see herself getting more out of this than just the friendship which existed, he pulls back. At least this time she is glad that she simply wrote him the note, but never sent it. This way, while her heart reels from the pain, her ego doesn't have to deal with the loss of another friend. It doesn't have to deal with another man's nonchalance and non acknowledgement of her feelings for him. Thankfully, this time, her feelings simply scratched surface, so there's not much pain attached. The tidal wave of disappointment which it brings however may be just as bad. 

She's not ready to give up yet, although she has vehemently said that she is D.O.N.E. Even she and the ones she has said it to know she won't yet. But this much is true, she is tired, tired of the ritual of loving and losing. Tired of the pain of rejection. But she will go on, because it drives her on, knowing one day...her love story will come true. 

“Was I bitter? Absolutely. Hurt? You bet your sweet ass I was hurt. Who doesn't feel a part of their heart break at rejection. You ask yourself every question you can think of, what, why, how come, and then your sadness turns to anger. That's my favorite part. It drives me, feeds me, and makes one hell of a story.” 
― Jennifer Salaiz