Tacy's Take On Tennyson!

My parents are putting their dog down today.

I haven't cried this hard since...well it's been a while. Sadly I didn't even cry this hard when my grandma died.  It's kind of funny, because for a long time we've all expected to show up at  my parents house and Nubbins will have died, because he is old. And we all talked about how it would be "easier" if he died, but now that he is going to, it is incredibly sad. He is 100% part of my family, and he will be missed.

Why do we allow ourselves to get so attached to something that is so fleeting? Setting ourselves up for heartache.

How does this tie into a blog about .com dating?

I wrote a blog a February 10, 2010 (right before Valentine's Day). I'm going to copy and paste it.

I'm sure everyone has heard the Tennyson poem ending:
'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.
But is it true?Is it really better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?
Considering I've never been in love and therefore have never lost love I can not profess to be an authority on love and loss, but the upcoming holiday has planted seeds of cynicism in my mind.After all...over half of all marriages end in divorce these days.Thinking it over in my mind I keep telling myself that it would be better to have never loved than to have lost a love, but that seems so cynical.
But I don't think Tennyson was necessarily talking about marriage.
For example, I love my dog.Nothing makes me happier than picking my dog up from the vet. Seeing him wag his tail and jump into my arms as though he thought he'd lost me forever and I'd come back gives me the best feelings. It is moments like that that I know he loves me too.Nubbins is getting old, and I know he'll die someday, so when he does die will all the good times we had be for naught because we can never have them again? Of course not!
The same can apply to a human to human relationship.Relationships are like fires. Fires have to have fuel. All relationships are fueled with good times. The relationships that end poorly just stopped being fueled. So should you never have started the fire in the first place? Of course not!Even if your fire is extinguished by no fault of your own, I'd argue it is still better to have felt the warmth of a fire then to have been cold forever.
I don't think any amount of bad experiences in a relationship could make up for the lessons learned in actually having the relationship.
So I guess in my mind Tennyson is right:
'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

It's a good thing I wrote that down. So I could look back at it and see how I felt then, and remind myself to feel that way again. Because right now I'm feeling cynical about love.

I don't know how to express in writing exactly how I am feeling.

I am the kind of person who makes friends very easily. And once you are my friend you are my friend for live. Literally...because I have been blessed/cursed with the most amazing memory in the world, so I will never forget you. I promise! The curse part of my memory comes into play because I naturally place a high value on all of my relationships, and because not everyone cares as deeply as I do about our relationship, I am often let down. And frequently when our relationship is over in someone else's mind, it isn't over in my mind/heart. So I've experienced love and loss over and over. It's times like that when I want to punch Tennyson. Because even though I know I am learning and growing from each lost "love", I am still torn up inside from each one, and it's getting harder and harder to put myself back together.
But despite all the cynicism, I still want to believe there IS someone out there for me. Someone who will love and care just as deeply for me as I do for them.
So until I find him, I will continue collecting friends, just to lose them. Because, after all, "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."