True Love

Monday, December 10, 2007
OK, I understand that I am moody. I have mood swings, more that most people. One minute I can be laughing, the next minute I can be depressed and lonely.

Right now, I am depressed and lonely. But don't worry about me. Thirty minutes from now I will be watching old Friends reruns and laughing (I am just glad I don't drink, if I did, I would be REALLY moody).

Tonight I saw the movie Dan in Real Life. It is about a guy who meets a girl that he instantly falls in love with, then finds out that he can't have her. He spends most of the movie trying to move past her, but he can't. The entire movie is about love and family, about most people being happy while one person in the group is faking the happiness because he can't be with his true love. And of course at the end they end up happily ever after.

Even though it was a feel good movie, it has me depressed. The more I go though life, the less likely it seems like I will find my one True Love. I don't use that phrase the way that the movies use it, I use it the way that family and friends show it. Sara and Jimmy. Stephen and Bwige. Hurley and Helen. Each couple has an amazing love for each other that amazes me, and puts the True Love of movies to shame.

But where is my True Love? Stephen keeps telling me that "God has a girl picked out for you," but I don't believe that. I don't think that each person has exactly one perfect match. I think that there is much more randomness involved, more luck in crossing paths at the right time. This is not to say that God isn't preparing someone for me, it is just that I have never been on a real date with a girl, much less felt anything that I would classify as love (attraction, yes, but it seems all of the girls I am interested in are taken). I guess like I feel like an illiterate person at the library. I want to stop and read a book, but I can't even read the titles, so I just walk down the isles looking at the spines, longing to know what's inside.

Even outside of True Love, I am having (have been having) problems finding happiness in my life. I used to have a few friends, but I don't any more. I struggle to have fun filming things. I am lonely most days, and my work is unfulfilling. And even as I search for love and happiness in religion, it never satisfies. The few times that I am happy are when I am with family. Being with other people that love me is the only time that I am not depressed. But even then it comes with mixed blessing because I look around me and all of my siblings and friends are married, they have True Love, and that reminds me of how lonely I am inside.

The more I traverse in life, the more accepting I am of the idea that I will spend my life out as an old hermit in the woods: alone. And of course, thinking about this just makes me more depressed. I want happiness, I want True Love, but the more I search for it, the more it runs away from me, then taunts me from afar.

Like I said, don't worry about me, I am just being moody. I am sure that after I finish crying, I will be laughing again.

Soon.

I hope.

Matthew

4 comments:

Sara said...

I love you - with a true love that only an older sister can have for her fun brother. I'm sorry you're hurting and am looking forward to seeing you this weekend and again at Christmas.

I'm praying with you that God will show you your wife already! I'm with you - I don't necessarily believe that God has one person for everyone (though with some people, I think that's true), but neither do I believe that he leaves us alone to fend for ourselves either. I know he cares deeply for you and has the best in store for you. I'll continue to bug him that he shows you that "best" sooner rather than later.

Anonymous said...

Cool Uncle Matthew;

I love it when you read me stories and take pictures of me from all kinds of funny angles.

You don't need no wifey - you've got me!

--Little D.

Matt said...

Hey brother, I know how you feel, I really do. I've been there myself when I started at BHS. None of my old friends would take the time to get together anymore, and I could tell right away that I wasn't cool enough to be accepted by the cool people, and I wasn't uncool enough to be accepted by the outcasts. You were the first person who really befriended me. There were people in some of my classes who would talk to me, but they only did it out of obligation because they knew me from church. You were the first person who didn't care how cool I was or wasn't. You are closer to me than my own brothers and I wish that I could be there to help you out. I'm really looking forward to getting home and to moving back to Texas. We're going to have to hang out a whole lot. Don't forget that God is really big and He's really cool. It's been a comfort to me to remember that even when it doesn't FEEL like God is there, He still is. Even when it doesn't FEEL like God is doing something, He still is.

In the immortal words of the Great Bob the Tomato, "God made you special, and He loves you very much."

Helen Hurley said...

Thanks for being honest. So much of Christianity today says, "Be happy! Since God is great, everything is great!" Yes, but no... I still struggle with the answer to that, too. I do envy the friendships that Hurley has... you guys have stuck with him for a long time, and I hardly even speak to even my bridesmaids anymore, much less friends from high school. It does suck to be alone, though. Blah. In the end all there is to say is that God will take care of you, which is true, no matter how unconvincing it may be.