Would it be alright for me to tell you that sometimes, in that fuzzy few minutes that seem to standstill, between shutting my eyes and drifting off I still think of you. And even in my mind's haze I can tell that I'm smiling without trying and my heart's a little happier. Is that silly?

I was disheartened by a sitcom on CBS tonight (How I met your mother, maybe?) which focused on a girl who earned a fellowship to a culinary school in Germany so had to have the "do we break up" discussion with her 2-month boyfriend. And I was disgusted because the conversation only involved two options for this lady, going alone (and breaking up) or staying in NY (or whereever they were). Why couldn't he even consider going with her? This storyline hit particularly close to home because of my own stubborn-head-ed-ness, and also made me really sad. Because as one of the other characters pointed out, you can chose to follow your dreams and live lots of lonely nights, or you can be in love and spend those nights next to someone's heart.

It's not fair for the two to be mutually exclusive, dreams and love or happiness and independence or me and relationships. You know?

And I refuse to believe that they are; I can't believe that they are and still think optimistically that somewhere out there is someone who I'm going to care about enough to be willing to quit any job for him, do anything for him, but who will care enough about me, too, so that he'd never ask or expect me to. I just hope that I'm not fatally idealistic, precluding myself from ever again experiencing the joys and miseries of complicated, torturous, blissful love.

Because deep down I'm scared that I'm completely wrong and that society won't let me be successful in work and still be loved in a relationship, that societal morays will habitually screw me over. And I'll be too pigheaded to realize it until it's too late and I'm a 45-year-old who's had so many lonely nights she can't identify the aching in her heart anymore because she's emotionally dull inside.

sigh.