Broken hearts are very strange.  Sometimes they catch you when you don't even realize your heart can be broken.  Sometimes they'll sneak up on you slowly and one day you realize, my heart is broken - how can I be living?  And occasionally, they'll even heal.

Usually they don't heal immediately.  Mine took months.  In fact, it took almost a year, which is a long time for someone my age.  And then one day, I saw the subject that had broken said heart, and I wondered why on earth I had wanted him.  My heart mended pretty quickly after that.

It still feels strange to wake up and realize that I'm NOT in love with him - that I'm not in love with anyone, that I've got love somewhere inside me but one less person to love.  But it also leaves open so many possibilities.  I have more time to think about things that are - not more important, necessarily - related more directly to my life.  If I want to take Greek, I can take Greek without worrying that I won't be available when he calls.  If I see someone I want to talk to - or even flirt with - I can without worrying about being disloyal.  These may seem like the pathetic arguments of a girl who is single and trying to justify it, but I swear, they're not.  While I'm certainly not averse to dating someone, I'm really not dying for it quite yet.

I'd like to think that next time I fall in love, I'll be careful.  But really?  That's not how it works with me.  I am really very terrible at being careful, even when I think I am.  I'll always look back afterwards and think, "Really, Bridget?  Could you maybe think next time?"  And I know that by now, most of you probably think I'm a reckless, depressed lunatic.  Reckless, I guess, although I never really thought that until my brother Sean brought it up.  I'm not really as depressed as I was a while back.  (For anyone who's read my poetry - yeah, I was as down-in-the-dumps as I sounded.)  But I digress.  The point is that, I won't be careful.  Very likely, I fall hard again, because the only way for me not to do that would be to guard my heart so carefully that nothing could get through.  Frankly, even speaking throught the aftermath of a broken heart, I would still rather get hurt than never love anyone again.

BTW, have you noticed that my paragraphs have been getting longer and longer?  I'm not sure I like that.

Anyway, if I fall in love again (which I am expecting), I will be careless.  I won't be stupid - there really is a difference between being stupid and being careless - but the chances of me trying to stop myself from falling in love are slim.  And it's really not bothering me.  I'm pretty happy with my life.  Won't kill me to be careless in this area. :-)

One last note - this is just a weird rambling of my thoughts, and is an excellent example of what my english teacher would call "grammatically beautiful, but a bit disconnected."  So if it's hard to follow, I'm sorry.