Where Is He?

I often talk about boys in this piece because I like boys. Any gender term can be applied to here though. Both boys and girls can break hearts, but it's been boys who have broken mine.

I’m not the type of person to cry at weddings. I don’t cry easily, except for one week each month if we’re being honest. Recently though, I was at a wedding and I held back a few tears. It wasn’t until I got home that I let the tears flow. 

It wasn’t that I cried at the vows, or how beautiful the bride looked (she looked absolutely radiant by the way), but it was just a random song that played at the reception. Even though I’m not a big country music fan Lee Brice’s song “I Don’t Dance” broke my heart into a million pieces for a minute or two.

I’m a dancer, I’ve danced on countless stages, and probably hundreds of dance floors by now, but I’ve never had a really true slow dance. I’ve had obligatory slow dances at homecomings and proms, but they were full of teenage awkwardness and I knew that we were just dancing because everyone else was. My date wasn’t dancing with me because he wanted to but because it was the standard. I want someone to want to dance with me though even though they don’t dance.

Part of the reason my heart was so easy to shatter was because the table I was sitting at was all happy couples, and me. Granted, I was the youngest one and the table was full of true grown-ups. Still, I couldn’t help but think of that I haven’t come close to having someone like the spouses and significant others everyone at my table has. In fact it started to seem like I never will. 

Sometimes I think that love is obsolete in this day in age. That there are no more George Bailey’s willing to lasso the moon to win the girl’s heart. Then I see the love between people I know and remember that it still exists it’s just different. In this difference though, there is a new culture of, well frankly, assholes. There are a large string of boys in their early 20’s who do not mature the way they used to. They are swept up in a party culture that is heavily exasperated while they are still young and in college. I’m not bashing this culture completely. I understand it and I think it’s probably a good thing for people to sow their wild oats. However, it’s us girls, generally speaking, who get our hearts broken through the actions these boys take as they try to live up to the culture's new standards, or maybe it’s just me. 

No matter how cool I try to be hook-ups and casual dating my heart still gets involved. Again, maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but think that the distance in my friend’s eyes on Sunday mornings speaks to the fact that it isn’t. There is no pain like having someone who you believed cared about you prove you wrong. Whether that be through unanswered texts, cold shoulders, seeing them with someone else, or having them ask you what your name is, again. It was when the dance floor filled with happy couples that night that I was reminded of that pain. I thought of all the boys that I thought had once cared about me, and how none of them would truly want to whisk me onto that dance floor if there wasn’t something in it for them. 

I know I’m young. I know that I’m nowhere ready for marriage, but I’m ready for a change. I’m ready for boys to become men. Sometimes, and it’s only sometimes, on nights when I see the moony look couples have in each other’s eyes, or the everyday love they share in the little things, that I think, “Where is he?” 

Wherever he is, whatever stars he’s looking up at, and trust me he’s the type to look at the stars, I hope he wants to dance.