"Your Love Will Be Safe With Me" or "I Love You For Your Little, Startled, Thoughtless Ways"

I think this is one of those grown-up lessons.

I'm slowly discovering the real depths of how self-involved and self-centered I can be sometimes. I care about other people immensely, and love to make them happy. You guys know this about me, I hope. But I'm not a very good listener, because much of the time I only act as if I'm waiting for my chance to speak. And I'm seeing more. I'm seeing that I very rarely consider the effects of my actions on other people aside from how I will feel about it, or how it will affect me.

I have had no problem seeing multiple people at once, dating a few guys, a few girls, and talking about it honestly (oh honesty, how often you lead me into trouble). But when I am seeing someone and they talk about other people they have feelings for, it makes me feel bad, I feel hurt. I have just been assuming all these years that they couldn't possibly feel the same way. They didn't care about me, since they didn't say it out loud every six seconds, so I can talk about whatever I want and it won't hurt them. How stupid is that?

I need to start really working on my listening skills and how perceptive I am. For so long I've thought I knew people really well, I listened, I was a good friend and always there for people. I'm seeing now that I should be better at it. I have got to start paying attention to other people, really start listening and taking it in and not just considering what's happening in relation to me or when I get the next bit of attention.

And as far as my habits with boys, well, we all know that I've been learning those lessons for years now. But it's always been all about me, right? I was subservient and dependent for so long, that I went headlong into being thoughtless and careless with people and that's not balance, it's just the inverse. What I need is balance. What I need is a way to understand my own feelings and pay attention to what I'm saying and how it would make me feel. And maybe if someone else says the same things I do, I need to remember that.

These seem like easy lessons, obvious even, but if there's anything that I've been wrong about for the longest time, it's love and relationships.

So hey, I'm listening this time. I'll figure this out. I'm gaining strength every day. I'm growing up.

And then I fell for a boy with blue eyes who I've known less than a week.

There is reason in everything.

<3gen

I love you
For your little,startled,thoughtless ways,
For your ponderings,like soft dark birds,
And when you speak ‘tis a sudden sunlight.

I love you
For your wide child eyes,and fluttering hands,
For the little divinities your wrists,
And the beautiful mysteries your fingers.

I love you.
Does the blossom study her day of life?
Is the butterfly vexed with an hour of soul?
I had rather a rose than live forever.

--ee cummings