40th Blog Special Edition ** Letter From the Author AJT

Welcome readers, as we have reached blog # 40 I decided to open up to you all and allow you to understand why I came to begin “The Simplicity Of Love”. I had hoped that it would lead individuals to always having faith in love no matter how bad their luck was with relationships, no matter how much they had been hurt and no matter how bad they wanted to give up, because if there is one thing in this world that will change you and bring you back to life- it’s love. Don’t believe me? Well here I am the author Antoinette J. Thompson giving you my story because I believe someone somewhere will become a little more faithful in the essence of love. Here it is…

And after the liars, the cheap dates, the cheaters, the abusers and every bad competency you can think of that coincides with the journey of “Relationships Gone Wrong” I have found myself in this place with the right man, at the right time, in love truly for the first time.

I think through life we want so bad to be in love that we make it up in our heads with every relationship we enter. The person we are with can cause us more pain than happiness and because we stay through all of the hurtful words, actions and lies we believe it to be real. We find real love through the struggle of our relationships and we trick our minds into believing that “this is what love is about”. We say the tears we cry are only cried because we are in love. I am here to say that I have been there before and a love that hurts you more than it does good is not love at all but instead it is you tricking yourself and trying to persuade your heart that something you want is what you have.

I can count on one hand the number of relationships I have had in the past 6 years and many of them I uttered the words “ I love you” unknowingly. Most times I said it because it was said to me. The others, I said it because I had wanted to be in love so bad. It’s amazing what we would do for attention but its even more amazing the things we will push ourselves to believe in order to have a partner in our beds, no matter how much pain, agony and disrespect they bring into our hearts.

Truth is it is not until we stop, take a second and look back on those relationships that we realize we have never experienced love at all and that is what happened to me. One day I sat and I thought long and hard on my past relationships. I almost married one, and the rest I forced myself to stay in. Well, all of them I had forced myself to stay in even though deep down I did not want it, I just wanted what it could be but what it was never meant to be – REAL LOVE. Once I exited one relationship I rushed into another still on the search not knowing that one day the search would end because love would find me.

Well, when I was busy making other plans, trying to force my heart into another relationship, real love came, stopped me from making a huge mistake and sent me someone who was not hard to love, someone who I could not help but love. In the midst of living a lie, love came in and brought truth.

When I was 21 years old I fell in love for the first time. And let me tell you that I gave him hell. Not because he was a horrible man because actually he is an amazing, one of a kind man and not because I was already in a relationship, which I was. But I gave him hell because I was afraid. I did not know this feeling; I never experienced the thought of loving someone even more than I had loved myself. Putting someone else’s happiness in front of my own had never been a reality for me until this man came into my life. And it was then that I realized that the past was just that- it was not real, it was a stage in life that I had to pass in order to be ready to love the RIGHT way with the RIGHT man. Well after realizing that I was letting fear hold me back, I let go of the dishonest life I was leading and I choose to live a new one- in love for the first time.

My relationship is not perfect. We have our ups and our downs especially because I am in a long distance relationship. Our jobs cause us to be on two opposite sides of the world, not of the country, but of the WORLD. I know many of you are thinking – what? How can it work? Well, there were times when we argued everyday but no matter how much we argued the love never went dry. No matter how much I wanted to ignore him I could not. The urge for another? Never exists. You see the thing with long distance relationships is if you are with someone who you love enough that you cannot even think or picture yourself with anyone but them, then there is no other option but for it to work. Love does not discriminate no matter how far apart the hearts involved are. My man and I knew what we were going to have to deal with and the trials and tribulations that would follow. So no matter how bad it got we vowed to never give up and here we are today a year later loving each other more each day. This distance is temporary and everyday we get closer to waking up to each other for the rest of our lives.

***********Always remember that no relationship is perfect and the rough times will not last long – it is only temporary.

Understand this and listen to me carefully when I say – love that is real NEVER ends. You never break a part; you do not move on and give up. Love between two people – REAL LOVE- is a bond and that kind of bond is only at its most prominent when it is with the right person. Everything between you two, the spiritual connection, the physical and mental connection is not only on a "love level" but it is also an everlasting friendship. That bond, in my opinion, does not come around 3-4 times in a lifetime. It is rare and only a few people in this world have it. Even some married individuals do not have it and are married to the wrong person. There are some people, like I was, who are forcing themselves to be in relationships with the wrong person. Real love does not come around often and if you happen to experience it, you will see how it changes you for the better. You become a greater individual and no matter what storm is waving through your life you will still hold a smile because of that blessing you see everyday. That man/woman who makes the storms in life seem merely microscopic. It is a spiritual relationship because it involves the souls, spirits and essence of two individuals.

I write this blog “The Simplicity Of Love” because I have a profound respect for love. Even though my past is one where love played no existence, I was lead to love through all the misleading, failed attempts. I respect the journey of love because although the path may have you in tears, it may have you hating life, it may have you wanting to give up all together, it eventually leads you exactly where you are meant to be. You may just find yourself having fun being "in like" in most of your relationships and that is FINE. You will not be in love with every person you date. Just trust the capabilities of love's trail to get you where you need to be, into the arms of whom you belong. Cliche? But speaking from experience you will always end up right where you belong.

So if you take anything from my blog just take the ability to "LIKE" over and over again and to keep faith in eventually being confronted by love. When you least expect it, as you are making other plans, as I am a witness, love will change your life. It will make you a BETTER YOU and more importantly it will save you.

The written words of AJT