When I first read what the character Rose Walker said in The Sandman (by Neil Gaiman) I couldn’t believe that it was describing exactly what I’ve always felt about love.  The truth is that I’ve always been scared of it. Maybe not scared about love… maybe what scares me is the possibility of it ending and dealing with what happens next.

Sounds funny because I went through it some time ago and the possibility of meeting someone and falling for them made me  want to remind myself that I couldn’t do it all over again.

The problem most of the time is that while there are some of us who fall in love “for real”, there are others who only fall in love with the idea of it. This happens a lot when you meet someone “online” or “long distance”. You put a lot of effort into getting to know this person only to realize that your effort is not being reciprocated. Instead, they fall in love with the idea of having someone to send a few messages, call once a few days and say how much they “love” and “miss” the other person. After a while, when the person gets tired of “playing relationship” or doesn’t get what he/she wants, they leave breaking the other person’s heart in the process. They never worked to build something real.

But can we break our own heart with ideas and false expectations? the answer is yes, we can. We fall in love with potential, with what it could be, with what if… that’s when we give them a piece of ourselves, taking a piece of our souls when they leave us. Love does take hostages. We stop being ourselves; if we are not careful we start living for someone else. That’s when and why we hate love sometimes, yet we crave it.

In spite of all risks we choose to love. Someone once told me that the heart has reasons that the mind doesn’t know. We are afraid to be hurt yes but we build our defenses with windows so we can see what’s out there and give us one more chance. Always one more. We are afraid of having to explains our relationships and reasons to others, how we met and where. Afraid of what to do if it ends cause it’s like the song 50 Ways To Say Goodbye by Train, trying to explain why the other person is not with us anymore or why it didn’t work and we end up feeling not only broken but stupid about it. In my opinion, we have the wrong mindset. We should worry about building something real with a person who has more than just ideas. In the end, knowing the difference between what you wish it was, what you think you have and what really is will save you a lot of heartache.