Commitment. This one, simple word used to have me running and hiding. This one word, however, was the key to all of the doors I found myself locked out of those lonely nights of my Sophomore year of college.
Commitment is scary. One of my greatest fears with commitment was giving my time to a person that would take it and ask for more, only to leave me with nothing in the end. I was scared of growing old and looking back at the years spent forcing myself to be happy, wishing that I could have one more shot at living.
But we only have one shot at living, and living is never perfect. We need to waste our time with people so that we realize our real needs within a significant other. We need to waste our time and cry at night so we know in the future how to contain those tears. We need to feel cheated and we need to feel weak. We need to be broken.
After a rocky relationship, I found myself starting my sophomore year of college trying to fit into awful societal norms. The hookup culture of college didn't seem like something that I wanted to partake in, but it seemed normal. I felt alienated for not wanting to have sex with everything that walked the campus, so I gave in.
After a few hookups I started to really think about what I was doing. Why should I have to put myself in these uncomfortable situations just because my friends tell me I have to? We are all rusted towers when our friends make us believe that their opinions are fact. My supports were slowly creaking and I was close to falling. However, my self-reflection helped reinforce those beams that held me.
No matter how many hookups I could have possibly had, be it one or one hundred, they would all end the same. I would be alone at the end of the night. Nobody would love me, and I missed what i thought that sense of love was. I pursued it.
Some people are perfectly fine with hookups, and not all people are built for relationships. I suppose that is an argument that some may make. I disagree. Deep down, we are all built for relationships. When people cheat on others or abandon each other, it is because they are not built for themselves. We must find ourselves before we can find any other people, and that, I know, can be a most difficult task.
Altogether, however, commitment is they key. In a relationship, we wake up in the morning next to someone that loves us. In a relationship, we can have the worst days, but there will always be someone to catch us when we fall. In a relationship, things are just...simple. We don't have to worry about the petty grievances that some college students face. I have had friends that almost got pregnant because of this hookup culture they feel so ambitious to follow.
Those stories made me realize exactly what I do not want to be, and everything that I want, I have. I realize now that when I hold my girlfriend's hand, I am holding a Skeleton Key to the doors of Happiness.
