new idealist.

I have reached one more conclusion about dating.

I think I have always liked boys. Rumor has it that I even had a boyfriend in kindergarten. We supposedly sat on the hill during recess and held hands.
I definitely remember having a boyfriend in first grade. His name was Patrick and I still remember what he looked like.
I guess I feel like I was pretty young when I started considering the nature of romantic relationships and daydreaming about what it was I wanted. As a preteen I swooned over Brad Pitt in "Meet Joe Black" and dubbed "Sabrina" as my favorite film.

But somewhere along the way, I turned cynical. I'm not completely certain about why or how this happened, but I concluded that all of my dreams about romance were immature and overly idealistic. I convinced myself that all of my hopes about romance could be reduced to the daydreaming of a silly preteen girl. When things went wrong with romance, I would tell myself that nobody was perfect, relationships were difficult, and that I needed to learn to accept it.

In speaking with a dear friend about some of my past dating experiences she exclaimed, "Laura, you used to cry all the time."
It's something I was surprised by and had chosen to forget.

I guess it's strange, but all of my preteen ideals about romance have resurfaced. I'm sure that they're more grounded in reality than they were back then, but I've adopted their elements into my new dating criteria.

I am absolutely convinced that I can find and have everything that I've been looking for my whole life in one significant other. In the event that I don't, I'd rather stay single.