take risks in life. you are going to get hurt in life but you still need to experience it.

So i have a cousin who is many years older than me. We are really similar though. We are both independent and we stand up for ourselves. I don't think she knows this but i look up to her a lot. She is always thinking about other people and does little things to show that she cares. I want to be like her later in life. She's successful, she's beautiful (she was miss chinatown) she's generous, so caring. and she is the total opposite of selfish. A few years ago she went to italy just to learn to cook. I thought that was so cool. She was in between jobs and she just took off and went to learn to cook. Now she always cooks at huge family functions; the food is superb.
The point is that I have been thinking about my life a lot lately. And i know the one thing i don't want to follow in her footsteps is in her love life. She's one of those girls that every guy falls for and is always asked out. She's not married. She has never had a serious boyfriend that I have ever met. Like I said she is many years older than me. She has a younger sister of 10 years that is already married with two kids. So she should already have settled down. I bet you she was proposed to many times too. A few years back I was talking to my mother and she said that the reason why she isn't married or has a serious boyfriend is because she is heartbroken. She got her heart broken when she was in high school and since then she has not trusted any guy enough to give her life to.
I don't want to be like that. I have gotten my heart broken, but I don't want that to make me scared to trust another guy. I don't know if I will ever recover from this heart break. ill get over the guy. But I don't know if I will ever be able to get over the pain. I don' want to be like my cousin in that way but at the same time I think I am starting to. I'm putting other commitments like work in front of me to hide my pain. I keep myself busy with other people to not think about my pain. Thats what my cousin does. She has so many firends and she always goes out. She busy herself with people and work. She's strong and she can hold it together. I can do the exact same thing. I always say how i don't need a guy.. but i really don't want to be alone in the long run.