Let's talk about luv.

I'm back! Sort of. I'm trying to be back. I keep saying, I'm going to come back to the blogosphere, but things kept getting in the way. Sometimes life just takes over and consumes your energies and suddenly  posting more food or shoe pictures on the internet doesn't seem like such an important task - and then I remember that I am a sharer and a writer and a photographer and I actually really enjoy blogging and putting this out into the world. So, here I am, again. This post is a bit more personal than most of mine, but sharing my life means sharing the parts of my life that aren't just cute coffee mugs and sparkles. It seems only fitting that one of my last posts before this hiatus mentioned recovering from a recent breakup, since this post is about recovering from the ending of a very (very, very) new situation, something I had jokingly referred to as luv - "I met this great guy, I l-u-v him!" I squealed to my friends for the past few weeks. Yes, I am that girl. It therefore came as a surprise that it ended, and it is a bit fresh. Though this scenario was short-lived, my heart is a bit smushed at finding that it is not going forward.

Why, you ask, when it was so short? When it couldn't have meant that much? Hear me out.

It's about expectations - specifically, the expectation of some future that will no longer take place. In one scenario, a longer one, one where you have had the ups and downs of real life and a real relationship and of loving a real person, you end up with a bit of baggage. You have things you can hold onto as to why it didn't work out, as to how you'll move on and do better next time. You have painful memories mixed in with the happy ones; words said in frustration and not just infatuation to remember.

With someone new, with something so short, you don't get to the bad parts yet. You don't have the baggage. You just have ideas of the fun things you can do with your new partner in crime, and when it turns out those things aren't going to happen, you're not so much getting past the loss of an actual person whom you didn't know very well at all - you are mourning the sudden disappearance of this future you envisioned, of all the things you wanted to do, of having someone new to explore the world with.

You can't make someone feel things for you that they don't, and that's just a truth I will accept over a few nights of mindless distractions and wine -- everyone learns this lesson, accepts this truth at some point -- but it still hurts to be rejected. I felt maybe I had found someone who would be around for a while. Your vision of your life in a month, two months, four months, changes with that sense of promise, and now it looks entirely different than it had a week ago.

It's not that you thought this person was the love of your life, because clearly it's not a good fit if both people don't feel the same. Rather, you're sad that you won't have a go-to guy for going to the movies, for cooking dinner together, for helping you with your craft shows. That you won't be able to share in his life's events, meet his friends and family, see where things could go. You're sad because you had envisioned your time spent one way and now you have to change that vision, cut off those options, stop making those plans. That you had thought this person would be a good fit, and it just turns out that they're not.

I don't mean to sound melodramatic - I'm not sticking my head in an oven or hoarding aspirin. Going to yoga with my roommate and watching copious episodes of Scandal and making up new patterns for my upcoming knitting markets are my recuperation methods this weekend, and they're more than good enough. I'm sure in a week or so I will have moved right along, because that's how life goes! And, because, I didn't really know this person very well at all.

But I had really looked forward to getting to know him better. I am disappointed that this other person didn't have the same feelings I had to the level I had them. I liked him, a lot.

The good thing about life, you guys, is that it gives you so many chances to start over! To meet new partners in crime, to have new future plans, to like different people for different things. I liked this guy, but he won't be the last person I ever have those infatuated, luv-ing feelings for. He won't be the last person I meet with the qualities that I liked in him, and he probably won't even be the last person to go out with me several times before deciding he feels differently. This is just how dating works! It's a lesson I hadn't learned yet, and so now I have. This just gives me a greater understanding of this process, of this journey, of finding that right person at the right time and having things click, of letting luv grow into a word with more vowels.

But I'm still a little hurt, surprised, and in need of ice cream. That's just standard operating procedure.

What are your thoughts on short-term dating? Do you have any advice for how to get over something like this? Also, what's your favorite ice cream?