musings

I was talking with Deb last night about how to define love, we went through a few ideas..
The one we ended on was being willing to sacrifice your happiness for someone else's...
I said that I would rather suffer than let any of my friends suffer, but I think we decided that this was different.
I used the example of after Mandie and I broke up, I thought about whether or not I would date my soul mate if I met them. I had decided I would not, because it would hurt Mandie.. and she said that would be a good example. So then I asked, does that mean that I truly love Mandie, and that she doesn't love me? Because, she immediately started dating someone, whom I wouldn't say is her soul mate.. Deb said that yeah, I do love her, and that sucks a whole lot.
She also said that it seems to her that dating is a casual thing for Mandie, and that I shouldn't take it personally. I told "I'm going to say this cause I can imagine Ross saying to me 'well Michelle you guys broke up and she had no obligation to you.' I understand that, but I had really hoped that my happiness meant more to her than that, because hers meant a lot to me.. She didn't have to wait a while before dating again, it just would've been nice to be able to believe that she cared about me as much as I cared about her. That's the problem in my life, I usually care about others much more than they care about me.
I guess... I was disappointed.
It hurts, it always does. I swore to myself, in elementary school, after my mother had been yelling at me a lot for a time, that I would never let myself get hurt like that again. I swore that I'd never get that close to someone again... I think I should've remembered the lesson my mother taught me. I shouldn't have let my guard down.. because it was nice, wonderful even, while it lasted. But afterwards... it's not worth it.