Back in highschool I used to take long drives by myself when I needed to do some thinking. I would drive from Mississauga to Niagara Falls and back to Mississauga again. I found that driving late at night with no cars on the road and signs passing by at 100 km/hr was the most peaceful thing in the world. Since highschool I've made very few drives like that. At least drives with the purpose of clearing my mind and thinking things through. Maybe I didn't have the need anymore. Maybe it was the arm and the leg I would have had to pay for gas. I decided a few days ago I'd get back to it and take a long drive south. I decided I needed to clear my head. It doesn't matter where I went but the drive helped. I feel a little better about the occurrences of the past week. I'm not quite at peace with it yet but I've made a step in the right direction.

On my drive, I thought about the past, the present, and the future. How my ex-gf and I struggled to find each other. How we went leaps and bounds to be together. How none of that mattered in the end. And how I'm going to handle future relationships. I'm going to forget about long-term commitments. I'm going into relationships now with no expectations whatsoever. Should I expect her to bathe daily? Sure, but I'm not going to. Expectations are for the birds. Promises too. Promises are definitely for the birds. Even if she promises to beat my ass with a cane, I won't believe it til I see the blood dripping from my cheeks. It's not about bitterness. It's not about pessimism. It's about protecting the one thing that people take for granted so often, their emotions.

You date and date in search of a person who you would want to share your entire life with and when you finally find that person, it doesn't work out. Love has a cruel sense of irony. Why not take the same ironic approach? Expect nothing and maybe love will come knocking on your front door.

For those who have a little more faith than I do, ignore everything I've said above.