Closed For Repairs

I was joking around with someone today. They were talking about having heart bubbles (that giddy feeling when you are falling for someone) and I replied that I have no heart. It was a joke but the reply “so you can’t fall in love?” came back and made me think.

Love for me equals disappointment, abandonment and failure. Every man in my life has let me down.

The man who provided sperm to create me wanted and chooses to this day to have nothing to do with me.

My dad (he adopted me when he married my mom when I was a year old) left when I was 10 and never really made an effort to continue our relationship. He put it all on me to call him if I wanted to spend time with him. He never called me.

My cousin who raped me when I was 10. He was supposed to be family and yet he betrayed and disappointed not just me, but the entire family.

My first (and probably only) true love left and moved to Colorado and married someone else within 6 months of moving there when we had been together for 3 prior. He treated my heart as if it didn’t really matter. He did admit that he realized afterwards what a huge mistake he made treating me so callously, but the damage was already done.

My brother devastated our family with poor choices that he made that he will be paying for the rest of his life.

Devon’s dad who after I got pregnant accused me of getting pregnant by someone else and trying to pin it on him. It took a paternity test for him to believe me. Then I moved across the country so that my son could have a relationship with his dad and I never got so much as a thank you. Instead I tried to make it work with someone that was unreliable, involved others in our relationship until I had to end it because I couldn’t depend on him to be responsible and grow up.

And people wonder why I am so closed off emotionally. I hide it pretty well. I am thoughtful, smart and empathetic. But I don’t involve my heart. I try, but I just can’t. How can I trust anyone to treat it carefully when every single person that I have entrusted with it (or thought about entrusting it to) has casually thrown it away?

I will tell someone that I love them… and maybe part of me does. But I don’t give them all of my heart. I don’t open up that most vulnerable part of myself and let them in. That little room that carries the absolute essence of who I am. The one that if destroyed, would destroy me.

I want so desperately to be loved and to love in return. I am well versed in infatuation, desire and friendship, but I crave the elusive co-mingling of souls. The feeling that provides a certainty that this person loves me without reservation.

Then I wonder how I can expect or even hope for someone to love me without reserve when I can’t return the same to them.

There are times when I have thought that the potential is there. Like an oyster with the precious pearl. I slowly start to open up hoping that this is it. This is the time that love will take ahold and rattle me to my bones. Then, it never fails… before I can open completely and give them that precious pearl, hurt, disappointment or disillusionment occurs and I snap back closed. Once that happens there is almost no chance of my heart ever opening again.

Of course I wonder flippantly if any man deserves my love. Being on the dating scene has definitely made me wonder about the quality of available men that are out there. But then I guess that I may not be the catch that I thought I was. After all, who wants someone that might not ever be able to really, really love them?