My friend E and I just finished watching the movie “Becoming Jane” based on the life of Jane Austen. I have read and enjoyed multiple novels of hers, as well as the movies that were made of them. I never knew her life story. I watched it unfold in this movie, starring Anne Hathaway(whom I adore). She encounters two marriage proposals which she turns down, because she does not love them. Then there is another, she truly loves him and accepts; only to decline upon discovering he was the sole income of his parents and siblings. Said income would disappear if they married. A strong woman she did the “right thing” and did not marry him. The end of the movie concludes with them crossing paths again. Jane Austen never married. A woman who had so many talents, loved and worshipped by many, died alone. To me, there is something just so sad and empty about her path. She wrote of such great romances while barely experiencing a brief memory of love herself. What if that is my future? I know I am only in my “mid to late twenties”, but I am getting scared. I will not marry without love or affection; but until this point I truly believed God had someone out there for me. Now I’m concerned. What if I walked away from someone I could have grown to love? What if I will be single all of my life? Is it time to compromise my dreams and hopes of what my love life will be? What is more valuable at the end, is it being married with out affection, or dying alone with my standards? I am petrified of not finding the love of my life. A mistake I always seem to make in my panic, is to go backwards. I feel that there is no one new, so I start sorting back through the old. The exes, in hindsight, seem a hell of a lot better than they did when I was in the past. I start to question if I made the correct decisions or if the relationship could be salvaged- why? Because I am afraid to be alone, that’s why.
Where does one find love? Do you really have to wait for it to come to you? I have been single for three years. There have been some “trysts” and some dates in between, but nothing lasting longer than a month. What, if anything, am I doing wrong here??
