A close friend of mine recently told me that I would end up a lonely old cow if I continued to dabble with love in forbidden places. She cursed me and told me no good would come of what I was doing. “What does she know anyway”, I asked myself, before dismissing her wrath in the knowledge that I was in a different space; balanced again and sure of what I want. But she is a friend whose judgement I shouldn’t question. Another friend had something quite different to say about love and breakups. “You wake up one day and it’s over and every morning you wake up with that pain and that longing”, she lamented, “… until one morning you wake up and there’s someone else in your bed.” And apparently, according to her, you’re over the heartbreak hurdle … just like that! Someone else hinted at the metaphorical pissing on trees that guys tend to do. And then there’s the friend who won’t rest until she’s found me a sponsor with Love Addicts Anonymous. Anonymous? yeah, right.

Everyone has an opinion and I’ve listened to them all … ‘yawn’ … but lately I have been very selective about who I go to for advice because what I am told hasn’t suited the idealist in me even though I can’t deny the validity in what they have to say.

‘So what is it they have to say?’ you want to know. They tell me that the clandestine nature of a relationship deprives me of my ability to live life with the full breadth of who I am. They say that I am incapable of being in love with one man while playing the field with others. They tell me they still see my vulnerability despite my protestations that I’m fine. But mainly they assert that I don’t know how to do these things in half-measures. My friends know that I can’t open my heart just a crack without leaking my love all over the pavement, but they also know that I want to believe in love above all things and that I would sacrifice my soul for the chance of just a taste of its sweet nectar.

‘So where does that leave me now?’ you ask. Well, going nowhere … and slowly. But in a good way.

I sit here with the foetal scan of a new year, on the cusp of my practical and my most idealistic selves, breathing possibility into the promise of new life. I used to feel ashamed of the idealist side of my nature until I realized we all have a bit of the optimist and the romantic in us; we all strive for a future that is an improvement of our past and whenever we do that, we gloss over the practicalities that threaten to get in the way. Memories become a gossamer haze and we tend to move forward with a view of a future that often contains a fantasy that has wiped clean the slate of past experience. Why else would people give birth again, why else would children climb trees after falling out and adults get back on the motorbike once the metal plates have been removed? Pain fades. And that’s the truth.

2011 saw love rip holes in my chest and my old adage, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you want to die’ seemed always more appropriate than the one ending in ‘stronger’ … although they do say a break heals stronger than the bone. This is encouraging. But I’m prepared to get back on the horse in 2012. I’m willing to take my RDA of pessimism and settle for something a little more normal for now. We live in an era of questioning the institution of marriage, monogamy and heterosexual couplings and a time when polyamory and commitment phobe feature in regular conversation. But I’m going to stop thinking so much this year. Instead I am just going to feel. I’m going to give up the battle of head vs heart and focus on my body. It’s doable, right?

Trust was my word for last year – it still is – but for 2012 I have chosen the symbol of the snake, Ouroboros, for its representation of the perpetual cyclic renewal of life. I’m going to leave things be for a while and let life take care of itself. I’m tired of metaphorical challenges and I’m done climbing mountains unless they’re made of solid rock. I say it every year and I’ll say it again … hell, why not … ‘This year’s going to be different.’

Own it. Love it. Live it. Here’s to 2012.