Here is a post that has been churning in the back of my mind for some months now. To eliminate any and all mystery, I will explain the title of the post from the get-go:
The beginning of May 2016, the man I dated for a smidgen over a year and I split up. The beginning of June 2016, I finally started my adventure of re-reading the Harry Potter books for the very first time since reading them as they came out when I was a child/teen, a feat I have been talking about for years.
I am (as someone blatantly called out recently) a "serial monogamous dater." I have put lots of passive thought into this blunt truth. Here are some of the reasons I can't help being this way:
- I believe everyone deserves to be passionately loved and cared for
- I believe everyone is capable of expressing their very own great and unique love
- I am fearless (and perhaps foolish) when it comes to love
- My fearless love is infectious
- I never believe that love will fail tomorrow or the next day - I always assume its permanence
- Falling in and out of love are both my greatest strengths and my greatest weaknesses
- I knowingly, lovingly, and gracefully hold a place in my heart for every person I've ever loved
- If love = happiness, no matter how fleeting, I will forever choose love
Unlike many single adults I have met in my short, love-filled twenty-five years of life, I have literally never once let heartbreak deter me from diving head-first back into love. I have been cheated on, lied to, and manipulated and I have done the cheating, the lying, and the manipulating. Just as I don't hold past partner's faults against my future partners, I don't let past versions of myself hold my present self back. Some days, this ability to fearlessly walk into yet another potentially tragic love story feels like a magical power possessed solely by me.
Because of my known power and weakness to fall in love, I recruited Harry Potter as my very own Patronus. Instead of using Harry to ward off Death Eaters, though, I have been using him to ward off my love addiction.
Drowning in laughter with my Mom, Dad, and brother and flipping through pages of fictional worlds are the only two things I've ever found to engage both my heart and mind in a way that leaves no room for loneliness or longing. So since my family and I are now spread across three states, novels needed to step up. There was never a better or more obvious time to revisit the brilliant magical world JK Rowling wrote into existence. What started as a temporary distraction from my loneliness and mourning over yet another lost love has now turned into something much more. Here is what re-reading Harry Potter in my single mid-twenties has taught me:
- As long as I am doing things that make me happy, loneliness and sadness cannot taint my singleness
- Loneliness and sadness will continue to be experienced regardless of my relationships
- I am capable of bravely embracing the unknown
- Loving from a distance is just as powerful and sometimes for the best
- Loving is my greatest strength and its okay to want to share that with the world
I suppose the point is this: I am still in love, I am single, I am not lonely, and I am happy...simultaneously. I am finally fiercely and fearlessly loving the most important person in my world - ME.
