I bumped into someone this weekend just gone. She was wayyyy out of my league, younger than me, very in tune with herself. Didn't want a partner, didn't want too many people in her life.

She completely blew my mind. Rare has the conversation been that convinced me to really examine my own life, to look deep inside and ask some searching questions about what I want and what matters to me. But this was one such conversation.

I never want to see her again. Wait, I mean I never want to plan to see her again. You don't net a butterfly if you want to enjoy its flight.

Relationships are expectations. "Let's meet up next week" "Can I have your number?" "How about we move in together?" The list goes on. We pile pancake after pancake of expectation on top of each other, with very little care, patience and caution. Eventually it topples under the weight of these expectations and it all crumbles to the ground. It's an unnatural desire to force a feeling that you've already had, to try and make it happen again; to pressure something in hopes of replication. You're chasing a feeling, an idea, a notion - I don't think you do, nor ever did, love me... I think you're addicted to feelings.

I want the death of expectation. I don't want your number. I don't want you to have mine. I don't want to meet you at the airport. I don't want to catch up for coffee. I don't want us to plan anything and I genuinely don't want to see you again.

Meeting this person helped me realise that you can't love a butterfly by catching it in a net. You can only love it by never restricting it in any way, expecting anything of it, or demanding it do anything to suit your purposes.

We did love all wrong. And I don't want a second take.