If you had been there, we would have talked the whole time.

I went on a bike ride today. Its been too long since I've done that. It took me about two hours and that was two hours of thinking about stuff. As if I don't spend enough time just thinking about stuff anyway. It probably comes to a point where I should just stop thinking so much and just act in whatever way feels best at the time. Thinking and worrying and wondering is just too complicated. And what does it accomplish, in the end?

More speed, less control. Right?

Nevertheless, two hours alone and I was thinking. I didn't come to any interesting conclusions. None that I'm willing to share here anyway. I can only say so much. And I can only say it so often.

I thought about relationships. All kinds of them. Where they started and how they grew and even sometimes, how they unraveled. It amazes me that some relationships just keep on living. Years and years across time and distance. And others just die. Suddenly. With no warning. After only months. After years. Or they kind of dry up like puddles in the sun.

Sometimes it hurts. It hurts in ways I didn't know I could hurt. And the pain continues like a scar that just never healed right. Rarely, these things just dissolve on their own. Whatever we were doing for each other just naturally ends. And even then there is some regret or sorrow or just a small emptiness where that person used to be.

We just keep doing it! Forming new relationships before the pain of the last even fades. How can we, remembering how much it hurts, reach out to another person? Do we somehow hope for a better end? Are we all masochist? Or is the pain of failed relationships less than the pain of loneliness? There are probably even more complicated motivations I don't even see.

It doesn't matter how much I talk or think about it or how many people I discuss it with; relationships are complicated and scary and wonderful and confusing and exciting and hard.

And I haven't even dated anyone yet. I'm sure THOSE kinds of relationships have a level all their own. There sure are enough books and movies about it.

For now, I shall continue to stumble my way through life and try to love who I can and hurt as few people as possible and maybe one day find the kind of relationship that doesn't unravel. The kind that makes all my fatuous hopes worth while.