Growing Roots

When I was younger, I never understood what "outgrowing" someone meant. I didn't understand how that could happen at all. How did you suddenly not grow at the same rate? How did you decide that you were beyond who you had always held close to you? How did this happen?

I still can't answer the questions of how and why, but I do realize now that it happens. It happens an awful lot even when we don't realize it is occurring. Some people never grow up and some people just grow old. I am not sure what is worse. I only hope that I continue on in becoming the person I am intended to be. I have never been one for standing still so I think I have a good chance at it.

I don't want to love someone with the same type of emotion I did at eighteen. Things are so much deeper now. What I am capable of feeling is so much more than the girl who loved a boy blindly, and wildly and madly. Now I have grown up enough to love someone with understanding and acceptance and with knowing the truth of things. It doesn't make me old. It doesn't make me wise. It makes me real. It makes us all real to allow someone into our lives knowing everything awful that could happen yet hoping for more of the best parts to find their way into our lives.

Growing older we have the benefit to know some things before hand when looking for someone to share our lives with. If we have grown up and out and in, then we know that there is more to it all then just how we "feel". It's more than just chemistry though there has to be chemistry. It's all more than money and pretty things and fancy places. It's more than accomplishments and prestigious lives. It is so much more than what we used to think and dream about when we were younger.

As we grow up we should finally have clear enough heads to realize that it's about liking someone as well as loving someone. That respect for another is just as important as kindness. That laughing together is so much more exciting than passionate arguments. That a core value shared makes for more stability than fleeting infatuations. That real love and passion and desires are built to last around genuine caring for another's heart and mind and not just a body.

In our grown up love stories, we have so much more knowledge and skill that we didn't have as teenagers if we have learned on this journey at all. Our choices shouldn't be made blindly or impulsively. It doesn't mean that there is no longer that flutter of hearts as we decide what we need and want. It is only that we should be trying to figure out who is growing at near the same pace. We should be looking for that kindred spirit that we can actually talk to and not just make love to. We should be attempting to find someone whom excites our soul.

In the next part of life I don't want to grow apart or away. I intend to grow with someone and never stop until the end. Nothing is promised. Yet we have to realize that if we don't continue going forward, even at a snail's pace, we never get anywhere at all.

Monika M. Basile