Love doesn't need a "spark"

Chemistry.

Sparks.

We think it’s the big prerequisite to lasting love. Without it we’re nothing more than roommates, moving peripherally through one another’s lives. We chase the “spark”: that elusive glimmer of attraction which, if shared, could lead to forever.

But love doesn’t need a spark to begin.

Relationships based on attraction are a cultural norm. We are drawn together like magnets, seeking physical fulfillment. The thrill of mystery. We think chasing attraction is the way to lasting love; that if we get that part right, everything else will fall into place.

But we have it all backwards.

Chemistry isn’t a prerequisite to love; it’s the product of love.

Love is the staying power that makes attraction so strong. The magnetism of attraction increases as intimacy deepens; as our hearts – less our bodies – are bound together by common experience and time. The spark is a part of love, but it’s not the cause of it.

Chasing the spark defeats our relationships. We move from person to person, eager for that “feeling” but unwilling to commit. We don’t understand what love really is so we keep failing at it. We’re emotional thrill seekers, trying to gauge forever by the most unreliable of means. We can fix this. We can know lasting love. But we have to stop chasing a feeling and embrace what love really is.

Love is the one who stays when no one else will. Love answers the late night call and listens on the line. Love is the shoulder you cry on and the arm around your pain. Love is the slow burn of friendship and faithfulness, a fire unquenched by distance or time apart.

Love is less of the spark and more the ember. It's always there, ever burning under the surface, ready to burst into flame once you recognize its potential.

True love doesn’t need a spark to last forever. It needs people who choose love when the feelings come and go – when emotions fade, and the seasons change. True love burns slowly, but it burns brightly – and unlike the spark, it takes a lot to put it out.

Change how you react

So much of life is dependent on how we choose to react to what happens to us.

Each day, we subconsciously choose how things will affect us. In positive moments, it’s so effortless for us to be happy. Yet, the moment something doesn’t work out the way we intended, we automatically shift back to the negative.

Change how you react to the things that didn’t work out the way you intended.

That job/internship/position you wanted and didn’t get? Realize that maybe this is your life steering you towards another direction where a new opportunity will arise.

That person who didn’t love you back? Recognize that they are not in a point in their lives where they are capable of giving you the love you deserve.

That bad day you had at work? Acknowledge that this is a case of mind over matter. Was it really that bad of a day? Or, did you let one little incident ruin the entire day?

Our society as a whole is so inclined to think negative. What if this happens? What if that happens? What if this isn’t good enough? So many times, I overhear people complaining about this, that, and the other thing. Yes, things happen in life, but negative thinking will only cultivate more negative occurrences.

It’s in your hands. You can choose to stay down, burying yourself in a deeper hole by telling yourself you’re not good enough or that only bad things happen to you.

Or, you can be upset about it for a little and then change your thinking. Acknowledge that you can move forward. Establish how you can make things better or what else you have going for you in the moment.

Your reaction is everything. It says more about your outlook on life than anything else. I’m not saying this is easy because it’s not. In fact, it’s a day-by-day process, but so much of our lives are impacted by our thinking.

When things don’t work out, don’t look at it in a negative light. Instead, look at it as a “shift” in your life. A “shift” to something or someone new.

A positive attitude will give you a positive life.

A negative attitude will give you a negative life.

It seems so simple yet, we make it so hard. Change how you react to situations and you will change your life. 

Love without escape plans

What really is love?

Most of us rub our heads and track our soul down for this one question, but never do we get to a conclusion.

Is it a feeling or is it a decision?

Love is unquestionably a feeling, when you see someone and your heart races when they walk by you, your heart skips a beat, glaring at their face is your medication. A feeling of wanting to be with them all the time , wanting to hear their voice, wanting to wrap them in your arms , wanting to touch their lips , wanting to be the one for them, wanting to never fail them but honey is this feeling enough can we call it love. Will this last forever?

Love is more of a commitment; a decision of risking everything you have, everything you want and everything that you want to be in this life for one soul whose voice you choose, whose body you decide to keep close, whose happiness you know you wanted to share, whose problems and misfortunes you know you had the guts to bear, whose name you know you will be proud to have along your own even if they are meek in real, who you choose among the million choices you have in this star.

Don’t promise them the moon and the stars rather stay with them in their difficult times. Love is an intangible force that can be both a motivator and a destructor. Feelings don’t stay forever. They can never be forced. They can duel at times. They can be misleading. They can take you to the wrong. They can drown you in grungy, Feelings are as permanent as a baby's memory. What really counts is how strong you can be to stay with this one person in every situation.

Can you spend a lifetime with them without an escape plan? Can you love without abandon? Love at times can be confused with lust or attraction. True, intimacy is a way of showing love and building up the relationship stronger but it is never enough. Loving someone not only means touching their naked body but also their naked soul.

You should know about their fears, know about the things they admire. You should know about their shortcomings, know about their desire. You should know about things they long for, know about the things they hate. You should know how they like their coffee, know their scent. But most importantly, you should not know all this after they tell you about it. You should discover all this on your own and if you can’t simply ask them about it.

Loving means knowing when they need you the most. Loving means knowing when you should give them space. Loving means showering them with affection when they are annoying as hell and this is the time when ‘you’re commitments and promises’ come in picture.

Don’t promise them the moon and the stars rather stay with them in their difficult times. Love means staying in a partnership agreement with where you share everything equally but where you are always willing to give in more whenever needed.

All this might sound really one-sided but if you give this little to the one you love you are sure to get even more in return. Love is not a hormonal call but strong-headed decisions. The only time you should listen to your heart is when you decide the one you want to stay committed to the one you should love with all your heart.  This concept or this definition of love is really old school but this is what “LOVE” and “LOVING” is really about.  Love without escape plans. 

Be with someone that makes you happy (even if everything is going wrong)

The saying goes: It’s not where you are, it’s who you’re with. And it couldn’t be more true — as long as you’re with the right person.

Find the person you want to be with no matter what, because being together is so much better than being apart. The one who makes your surroundings slip away because their presence is the only aspect of your surroundings that really counts. The one who inspires you to abandon your routine and all of your daily comforts in the name of togetherness because there’s nothing more comforting than the way you feel when they’re nearby. The one who makes swimming a thousand miles with a cramped leg, crossing the Sahara with a single canteen of water, or traipsing through a foreign land with $20 to your name sound like totally reasonable measures — if that’s what it takes to reunite.

This person will never fail to make you smile in the least likely circumstances. This person will make every leg of an unpleasant journey totally bearable, even pleasurable. This person will push you to find happiness where you’ve long forgotten happiness exists, nudging the dormant pieces of your soul residing deep within.

They will move you to wake up at sunrise even if you’re not a morning person so you can tear off your clothes while running through the sand and skinny dip. They will motivate you to stay up long past midnight for a late night stroll even when you’re exhausted because one more hour of wakefulness together is always worth it. They will make you forget the pesky concerns that typically stop you from doing certain things — all those little worries that filter your ability to truly embrace the world.

This is the person you need, because not all of life is actually all that fun unless you grab it by the horns and tame it as you go. Real life involves countless hurdles, both big and small. But if you can tackle those obstacles head on — not just grit your teeth and bear the difficulties you’re destined to face, but approach them as good times waiting to be discovered — you will always be fine. The right person will help you see this.

Couples that know how to smile together in the least likely circumstances don’t have to rely on anything but each other. Even when things go terribly wrong, all they have to do is feed off of their love. Nothing can stop them from finding the rose buried deep inside a pile of thorns, the never-ending depths of their bond an oxygen tank they can always draw upon.

They don’t need fancy hotel rooms. They don’t need big celebrations or elaborate feasts or good weather to enjoy themselves or to craft lasting memories. They don’t need a wifi connection or social media feeds to help pass the time. They take life as it comes — bliss, devastation, boredom, and all — because as long as they’re together, nothing else matters. At all.

There is so much power in loving someone with all of your heart and letting that love guide you day in and day out. So go find the person who helps you adjust the lens through which you see life’s darkest parts. When you do, you will feel automatically stronger. Better equipped to live. Better prepared to take risks. Better positioned to smile, even when it seems impossible. 

Is love a risk worth taking?

Jumping out into the horizon with nothing more than hope and a parachute—it seems like one of the biggest risks a human can take. The security of solid ground gone, you are caught in the battle between gravity and air resistance—and for those few seconds you are completely vulnerable to science and chance. But, the truth is, out of every 101,083 skydives there is one fatality. Not really as risky as it sounds.

Yet, across the world, billions of people participate in a bigger risk–not with their physical safety, but their heart: falling in love.

With all the thrill and risk involved with that sky dive, truth is, you’re likely more “safe” gliding with a parachute with a statistically predictable safe ending, than you are in a relationship. Humans are too much of a variable to place any bets on.

It’s like a game of emotional Russian roulette. When you’re successful at it, it’s a beautiful wonder. When you’re not, it’s an excruciating tragedy.

To strip down your defenses, to show all sides of yourself, to feel without guarantee of reciprocation, to give yourself to someone without any predictable outcome, to become completely vulnerable to heartache at the hands of another person—that, to me, is true risk.  And billions of people are emotional dare-devils, blissfully diving into the unknown, feeling that exhilarating rush of endorphins. It’s the necessary risk that drives the human race. We all, in some capacity, want to love and be loved in return.

Yet, some of us walk around in a suit of armor–trying to protect ourselves from the unknown. We hide behind a veil of independence because relying on yourself is easier than facing the disappointment and rejection from someone else, but, the truth is, we end up hurting ourselves. We deprive ourselves of life’s most precious and rewarding resource–love. Sure, mining for it can be a bitch in this world, but when you find it in it’s purest form it’s worth every risk and effort.

So, to all you risk takers out there, enjoy and celebrate your love.

And, to the rest of us who are a little battered and bruised from this journey—keep on being daredevils. There are no great rewards without a little bit of risk.

When a Writer Falls in Love

When a writer falls in love, their work blooms into a form of art that expresses the deep emotion they feel for their lover. The word “difficult” doesn’t reach the intensity of trouble that comes with any attempt of writing. It is in every way challenging, a complexity you cannot understand enough to overcome. It becomes onerous. Because somehow, every idea, every thought, and every word that escapes my mind, written by pen onto paper becomes something influenced by you. This influence, this love, it becomes impenetrable.

My focus could be the beauty of the sun. The bright, radiant light it provides that gleams over us all. I could inform my readers about how much I appreciate the sun due to my fear of the night. How the sun is the star located at the center of the solar system, and how without the sun there would be no earth. Yet quickly, the sun would become a synonym for you. For the comfort you provide me with, for the way there would be no me without you. The sun would become you within a few sentences. I would get lost in my writing, convinced that I am writing about the sun when in all reality I am writing about you.

I am able to begin a memoir on the life of a sad young girl. It would focus on her running away, the way she survived a rape, or how she overcame depression. There would be so many different life lessons and memories I have the chance to touch upon. However, I know somehow I’d find myself fast-forwarding to the moment she meets you.

I could take on an assignment in which would involve writing a review on a book, a play, or even a movie. An assignment that would involve my opinion and nothing else yet somehow, I’d discover another approach to mention how I had discussed it with you.

Incipiently, I created this belief that you had clouded my thoughts. Becoming a voluminous mental block for anything other than you. Though, I realize now that you have become nothing other than my biggest motivation. On one occasion I read, “If you make a writer fall in love, you will never die”, and never before did I make sense of this quote meant until I met you. In any lifetime and in any story, you have become my biggest inspiration. On the days I love you unconditionally, through the good and the bad. You have become my main character. My muse. My creative influence.

A writer in love can be oblivious to this unconscious need to convey their intoxicating love for another. A writer in love could be dangerous. But what danger exists without some form of beauty? 

When I say "I love you"

When I say ‘I love you’, it means that I treasure your heart. It means that I value you. And it means that I see a future with you.

When I say ‘I love you’, it means that I trust you with my whole soul. It means that you being happy, makes me happy. And it means that I would never ever want to do anything to hurt you.

So, when I say, ‘I love you’, please do not take it lightly.

For me, the word ‘love’ holds weight. It means something to me. It means something more than ‘I like you’ or, ‘I have a crush on you’. To me, ‘I love you’, means that I see my universe pointed in your direction. It means that I recognize how lucky I am to have you. And when I say it to you, please remember that when I say ‘I love you’, it means that I always will.

I don’t love lightly. I don’t love gently or softly. I love hard. Some may say I even love too much. But I would rather love hard any day than to take that sentence lightly. I would rather love too much, than to never love at all.

When I say, ‘I love you’ it means that no matter what, waking up to you would be my idea of the perfect morning. It means that no matter what, sleeping next to you would be my idea of a perfect night. It means that I want to keep waking up to you, each and every morning and each and every transition from fall to summer. When I say, ‘I love you’ it means that I can picture what a future looks like with you. And it means that I want one.

So, please, do not take those three words with a grain of salt. Don’t shrug at me, or smile a sly little smile. Acknowledge my love. Feel it. Accept it. And if you feel the same, than take my heart with yours.

When I say, ‘I love you’, I mean it. I’m not saying it just to make you happy. I’m not saying it to be romantic. I’m not saying it because I feel like I have to, or because I feel like there’s a deadline I have to reach.

‘I love you’ means that I want to spend hours talking with you at midnight. It means that I want to grow old with you and still call you perfect even when your wrinkles start to show. It means that even if we end, my love won’t dim. My love for you will never end.

So when I say that to you, please believe me. And when you are ready to say it back to me, only say it when you truly mean it. Only say it when you believe in me too. 

A Love More Than Words

You’re the only person I know who makes me hate words. This is no sweet nothing. I mean, how could you? Words are my thing. They’re all I’ve got. It’s a fact and a frustration that whenever you pop into my mind I get a little bit swept away, and whenever I hear your voice from across a room every precious word I have ever learned is wiped from my memory. They all give up, dead on arrival, power rendered useless.

From the moment we lock eyes to the very last kiss I feel mute. All of a sudden, this person who has dedicated their life to conveying emotion through words is at a loss for them, right when I needed them the most.

If I could, I’d climb atop every coffee shop table and shout your name; I’d grab your hand in a room crowded with our whispering friends and let you unravel my dreams, imparting every memory until you crouch with the weight of them. If I could, I’d piece together poetry and music, and I’d preach it as loud as any god would let me.

But I can’t. Not now.

So, what do I do? I learn to talk with my hands and my eyes; I learn to shout with them: with each glance or inside joke; with my fingers in your hair and the slow warmth of our bodies; with pink ears and a fluttering pulse. I have too many feelings for me to waste with words, so, most of the time, I am silent. In those moments, my words die within me. They are mute, powerless. And yet, I am screaming. I am strong, because in that blissful span of time, in one person’s company, I am happier than I have ever been alone with a million words.

About a year ago, I realized that what I was looking for wasn’t the perfect words. It was this wonder, this cacophony of nameless silence: of just sitting together, wordless but understanding, and knowing that although our moments together are fleeting and rare, they are there, adventurous nothings, and they are unexplainable, but they are perfect. Maybe that perfection wasn’t meant to be fleshed out: immortalized in words. Maybe it could lie between us, and just be.

About a year ago, I found that mere words could never constitute a whole life; they couldn’t give me a perfect silence like you could. And you know me enough to see that I love words.

But maybe I just like you a little bit more.

I don't need you, but I want you

I don’t need you to tell me I’m beautiful. I’m aware of how I look on both my good and bad days. I've spent many hours on YouTube perfecting the winged eye. I don’t need your words to validate me. I don’t need you to tell me you love me. Three words, so simple, really don’t mean anything if there aren’t any actions behind it.

I’ve fallen for those three words many times before. I don’t need you to hold my hand. It’s been involved with many people that don’t appreciate the language of physical touch, it would probably flinch at the graze of yours.

I don’t need you to hold me at night. I’ve slept in my bed alone for years and I honestly don’t even know how to share it with anyone outside of my cats. I don’t need you to be there at the end of the day when I get home. I actually enjoy the peace and quiet of my space and not having an obligation to share that with anyone. I don’t need you for what you can do for me, in any way. I’m capable of handling my own and satisfying my needs.

I don’t need you, but I want you. I want you to look at me and see the smile come across your face. I want to receive a cup of coffee from you after a long and tiring day, without being asked, and feel the love and care. I want to not have you just hold my hand, but reach for it because that’s where it belongs. I want you to remind me what it’s like to share my bed, my personal space, my safe space with someone and feel completely comfortable.

I want you to be there at the end of the day, because when you are, it feels even more like home. I want you to add to the life I’ve built for myself, not create one for me.

There’s a difference between a need and a want. I need my relationships with my friends, hockey nights, and morning coffee to survive. I want a bigger apartment, a fully stocked library and a fully stocked pantry to bake with. But I can live without those things. I am living without those things. Would they make me happier? Sure, they’ll add some happiness. But is my happiness dependent on those things? No. It’s not. I’m happy with the things I need and I’ll always have these things.

But that’s what makes wants, wants. They’re desirable for all the right and wrong reasons.

I don’t need you to be there, just like I don’t need a bigger apartment, but I want you to be there. I want you to be there for the good times, the bad times, the stressed out times, and the times when words can’t even help. I want to experience what it’s like to have a want fulfilled, to adapt to the changes.

I want to experience all of you. I want to learn what it takes to now share and be involved with another person. I want to learn how it is to confide in someone and know days will come when we don’t want to look at each other.  Not just the good, but the bad. A new experience is always desirable and while it’s never perfect, the want for it is still there. Maybe when I get it I’ll realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, but for now, I don’t need you…but I want you.

Love will not fix you

Nobody will admit that love does not fix them, that love cannot save them from their pain. Love can heal and regenerate a heart, but it cannot undo a life, a past. Love can redeem, but it cannot erase. Nobody will tell you that sometimes they don’t know how to let someone else love them, that they’ve spent so much time guarding their heart that they don’t know how to not.

The thing about love is that you can want it for so long and then finally find someone who looks at you in that way you’ve been dreaming of, but that you will sometimes be looking for the escape hatch Even when you don’t want to find one. Love can tear you open in all the best and worst ways. It will scrape you clean and it will show you parts of yourself you really didn’t want to see.

It can sometimes seem that the hard part of love is the before, the without. That emptiness that claws at your bones and reminds you just how truly alone you are and feel. You will make a home in yourself, love your skin, touch yourself in the way you want to be touched, and it will feel like the end is in sight. But, love, that finding part, that moment when it clicks together and colors brighten and the world around you both blurs out in the background, that part is the beginning of something else entirely. It can feel like that love part allows you a moment of reprieve, that silent exhale you’ve been waiting for. And, it does. It does. For a moment.

Nobody will tell you that love gives you more reasons to destruct it than it does to save it. Because there is nothing that will reveal you to yourself more than love does. Many people will distract this part away with sex and fights and blames and finger pointing and cheating and little lies and big lies and betrayal and neglect. Oftentimes it’s difficult to see when your unexamined wounds start showing symptoms in the relationship. Two people can certainly bring out the worst in each other in a way that is not healing, redeeming, or pure. Yet, there’s a side to that left discarded. There are many times where two people will hurt each other past the salvation point because they simply refused to examine themselves, to become aware to the ways their pain weaved itself into the bond between each other.

Love will show you where you hate, not just yourself, but others. It will unveil your ugly. That darkness that lurks in the corners of places inside of you that you thought you’d tucked away forever. There’s another side to the beautiful, to the falling in love, to the music that suddenly makes sense, to the heart racing aliveness that is love.

Nobody will tell you that every instinct within you that wants to ruin your own happiness out of a belief that you do not deserve to have it will scream at you. You will concoct subconscious plans to self-destruct, plans that you will not even realize are percolating in the background of your mind. A fight is never just a fight. Money is never just about money. Lack of commitment is never about lack of feeling. Nothing is ever about the thing it seems and that’s what love does. Love can make a home and love can break a home. Love can be weaponized against or for you, depending on how you wield it. Love can ruin you or it can purify you.

Nobody will tell you that you can feel lonely with love. You could need more from your life and they will be incapable of giving it to you and that won’t mean it needs to end, but it means confronting that they cannot be everything no matter how badly you want them to be. People won’t tell you that you could be angry with yourself and that anger could be synthesized into anger directed outward. They won’t tell you that you could be having a crisis of esteem, that you could have lost faith in yourself, and it becomes difficult to believe that this person, this love, could believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself.

People will tell you that you should find someone that makes you be a better person, but they won’t tell you about that process of betterment. They won’t tell you that sometimes this is a process of many revisions That before you can become better, you must become much, much, much worse. People don’t tell you that in order to heal, you must first confront that which you need to heal from. They don’t tell you that in order for you to weather the storm, there must first be a storm. There’s always a bow tied up on the package, never the before. Never the not-perfect. Never the not-shiny.

Love can be everything. It can transform you in all the ways you need to be transformed. It can be that heart-stopping intimacy that feels like your body is on fire, like your heart isn’t yours anymore, but belongs entirely to someone else. It can be all those things, but it is not solely those things. And, I think a part of me wishes I had known that, a part of me wishes I had my expectations set straight. Because, with love, everything is heightened. The bad can be so bad. But the good!

Oh, the good can be so good. 

If you fall in love with me

If you fall in love with me I can’t promise you it will be pretty. I can’t tell you I’ll make you breakfast on lazy Sunday’s. I can’t pretend that I won’t love you too much some days and not be able to even love myself others, when you wake up you may find me in a pool of my own tears or you may not find me at all.

If you fall in love with me, I won’t fall too fast, too hard, or endlessly, I have tried to love like that before and the results were nothing short of tragic. If you fall in love with me, I won’t change myself for you. I won’t give up parts of myself to make us work. I won’t plan a future with you that doesn’t include all of the things I want to do and be. My feelings for you will grow and change as they are supposed to and I will only be able to hope yours do the same.

If you fall in love with me I will show you how independent women love others. I will show you off to my friends. I will encourage you every day and help you achieve every goal that you are working towards, there is nothing more attractive than a partner with aspirations the same size as mine.

If you fall in love with me, I will share my interests with you and will hope you do the same. I will hold your hand in and kiss you goodnight. I will listen to your favorite song even if I hate it. I will try to hug you often. I will tell you my secrets and listen to yours, you will only have memories of the girl with every defense strong and steady.

If you fall in love with me, I will not be your everything. I will not tell you lies. I will not say that it will never end because I know it more than likely will. I will not beg you to stay if you no longer want to. I will not fight for us if you are not fighting for us. It does not matter how deeply or truly you love me I know when things must end.


If you are brave enough to fall in love with me I will try not destroy you.

When does love happen?

Is love the result of the first night spent in the same bed? Or maybe that night is a result of the love. Perhaps it happens the first time you meet their parents – maybe you fall in love with them first, sort of as a prerequisite to falling in love with the one you’re really with.

I guess one could argue that it happens all at once, in one moment. That maybe you go to bed after a night of binge watching Doctor Who and wake up the next morning completely overwhelmed with this feeling. And there was no exchange of words or sex or cupcakes to explain this sudden, extreme change of heart. Maybe it was just a really good night’s rest. Maybe it happens during your late-night Doctor Who session. When their eyes are glued to the screen with their mouth open slightly and they reach to grab a handful of popcorn, and it takes three tries until their hand finally finds the bowl and not your pant leg. Maybe this is the moment that the lightning strikes.

Maybe there is no lightning, but a steady flow of sunbeams that have always been present. Maybe there are only triggers, and that overwhelming feeling, that panic attack-esque feeling of being in love for the first time, is really us just realizing we’ve been in love all along. Maybe there is no one moment we fall in love, or we just don’t feel it anyway, but we feel the moment that we realize we’ve been feeling the way we have because we’re in love.

I tend to believe that love is similar to grief, and happens in stages without our knowledge. And it happens at different paces for different people – for some it may only take a few days, for some, weeks or months, in some rare cases it may even take years.

Maybe the stages are the same as grief; maybe in the beginning we are in total and complete denial that we are in love, and we try to convince ourselves otherwise. Maybe it’s denial because this feeling is too great, and this person really knows how to tell a story, and they clean up too nice, and their hair is too perfect, and they’re too kind to others, and they work out too much, and they are asking you too many questions about your job, and your major, and your feelings, and your mother, and your passions for you to actually be in love with, let alone for them to actually be in love with you.

Maybe by the end, we do really learn acceptance – maybe in the sense that we accept them for the little things; leaving the volume on the TV a little too high, the occasional hair on the soap bar, the fact that they don’t wait until the commercials to start telling you about their day, and by the time the commercials do come on, the story is over, it was anti-climactic, and now you have no idea who opened up the scoring in the game and the period is almost over and you know they'll talk through intermission so you won't be able to see what you missed.

But maybe we learn acceptance on an even deeper level. Maybe they’re not the ones we really need to accept. Yeah, they do clean up nice. But that tie wasn’t straight when he first put it on. Sure, their hair is flawless. But before you left the house, he had one strand sticking straight up and you think you’re dating Alfalfa. And maybe they are a really captivating storyteller. But it’s charming the way you take a year to tell a story, needing to tell every detail, stuttering and tripping over words, getting so animated, and ultimately forgetting where you’re even going with it, and by the time you get to the end, you’ve either lost everyone or they’re completely underwhelmed and it wasn’t really worth the effort it took to tell, or listen to. Maybe he can run a 5K and barely break a sweat, but I can sit in a coffee shop and write a novel about his kiss when he walks in the door from his run.

So maybe love doesn’t happen the first time you wake next to each other, or when you admit to them how old you were when you got lost on the way home from school and rode in a cop car to get home when you were in the first grade, or when they finally have your friends’ stamp of approval, or when your father tells them over dinner how you wanted to be a mermaid when you were younger and you cried when you realized you couldn't, but when we finally accept about ourselves the things we try so hard to force upon others to accept. When we’re finally in love with ourselves – that’s when love happens.

Run away with me

Pack your bags and leave your reservations behind. Unpack your hopes and your fears and every dream that you let drop by the wayside over the years. Pick up your wildest childhood fantasies and let’s steal away in the night. We’ll leave this wasteland, ditch this city, let the lights flicker off and burn out in our wake because we’re going somewhere where the sun burns long into the night.

Leave it all behind with me. We’ll run from our failures and misgivings, drench ourselves in sweet possibilities, dip our toes into the oceans of regret and dry our souls out in the sunlight of forgiveness. Forget about what was ever meant to come next. Forget the 9-5s, the wasted lives, the eventual decay of wasting away under someone else’s ideal of who you were meant to become. We’ll leave it all. We’ll pack up in the dead of night and find ourselves a world away by morning, with the wind at our backs and the sunrise on our skin.

Leave your pride and cynicism. Leave your bitterness and pain. We have no use for such things where we’re going; we’ll run straight out of the forest of our fears and strip ourselves of every limitation we’ve clung onto through the years. Take me to the dawn of all your passions, to the heart of your hopes, to the child that still lives on inside of you, with your dreams and understandings clasped between his tiny hands.

Don’t worry about right and wrong. Forget about all of the ought to’s and the maybes and the shoulds. There is a world that exists outside the land of right and wrong and together we can go and we can live there. We’ll worship compassion like religion and we’ll wash away our sins between the sheets. Let me see all of the best and all the worst of you. I’ll relish in the sunshine of your virtue. I’ll traverse the badlands of your heart.

We don’t have to live the way that we were meant to. There’s a secret I know about living and it’s written in the pattern of your skin, in the space that stretches in between your ribcage, in every breath you take that brings you one step closer to the life you should be living – beckoning you closer, calling you home. There’s a place out there for people like you and like me. There’s a world that I know we can take hold of, if you’ll leave your fears behind and come find it with me, agree to resign with me and walk into that bleary unknown of all your deepest desires and wildest dreams.

Please don’t give me excuses.

I am tired of being the one who hesitates, the one who deliberates, the one who is always being asked to stay, to stop, to settle down and think things over, when the desire to run is pulsating through my bloodstream with a strength and ferocity that I can no longer fail to give into.

I’m tired of making excuses, of crafting solutions, of taming and hiding and extinguishing this flame because the others cannot take the light. Let’s go somewhere where these fires can roar. We’ll fan the flame of every lust, light all of our longings on fire and watch our passion blaze into the night.

I see a flicker in your eyes and destruction in your smile. Together, we can burn this whole world down. 

I was born to be a heart breaker

When I was five, romance didn’t exist for boys, it did exist for me. “She’s going to break hearts one day,” people said, speaking about me over my head. I smiled, because that is something little girls are supposed to be pleased to hear.

At eight, I stopped wearing dresses because I couldn’t turn cartwheels in them. “A tomboy,” somebody said about me, over my head, as if I couldn’t hear them. I told them “But I don’t want to be a boy,” and they laughed. “We know, sweetness.” I said, “I’m not sweet. I’m serious,” and they laughed again. “You’re cute,” they said. I smiled at that, because that’s something little girls are supposed to be pleased to hear.

At nine, I had too many friends that were boys. “I don’t like it,” my parents would say, standing in the kitchen. But I didn’t understand it. “Your body is going to start changing soon, and I don’t want those boys looking at you. I don’t like it,” they’d repeat. We moved away that summer. I lost everybody.

At thirteen, my best guy friend wrestled me to the ground and covered me in kisses no matter how much I asked him to stop it. “It’s supposed to be like this,” he kept repeating, “stop struggling.” He told me I was pretty and lovely and that boys and girls can’t be friends. He told me to stop being mad at him, that girls are supposed to be pleased about these things.

The same winter, I was catcalled for the first time in my life. I jumped when the car pulled up by my side. They said “baby” over my head as if I wasn’t who they were discussing. I didn’t smile about it. I had to sit down to stop myself from vomiting and crying.

When I was fifteen, most of my friends were boys. My best friend told me he was in love with me. He told me I was breaking his heart. He said if I didn’t love him back, he’d have nothing to live for anymore. The story with the rest of them is all the same. Either they left me or they thought they fell in love with the idea of somebody I wasn’t.

At nineteen, I had only girl friends. They were gentle, and different, and walked me through things. They held my hand when classes got too loud for me, and it meant friendship. They kissed me on the cheeks when I was crying, and it meant friendship. They slept next to me and it was friendship in the way I wasn’t used to. I was used to “stop being a tease,” to “why are you doing this to me.” This was just friendship, and it was excellent.

At twenty, I had friends who were boys again, because boys are supposed to be old enough to see me as a person. One day while we were drunk, I asked one of them why they wouldn’t just say my name. He laughed. He said, “God, you’re going to hate me when I explain.” He said that they’d all formed an agreement behind my back that none of them would fuck me. If I was going to be one of the bros, I couldn’t be a girl to them. I could only be seen as a boy if I wanted to be their friend. All of this said while staring at a point over my head. He tried to kiss me at the end. When I pushed him away, he said, “Sorry,” took a breath, “but if I start seeing you as a girl, I’m gonna try to kiss you again.”

I said, “I don’t want to be a boy, though,” and he laughed again.

He said, “I know, sweetie.”

The summers when I was sad - and I was sad categorically - I tried reaching out. When I turned to the boys, all I heard was, “don’t cut, you’re beautiful,” “don’t kill yourself, you’re so pretty,” “think of the scars, sweetie,” “when you cut yourself, I’m the one who starts bleeding.” I didn’t smile, although I think girls are supposed to be pleased to hear these things. I didn’t know how to say: "I don’t feel beautiful, and even if i did, what I’m doing to myself has nothing to do with you, or what I look like, or how fuckable I am to you." Instead I told them I was fine, and fixed, and nothing bad was happening.

And so at twenty-five, I am sick of boys who are “nice” or are “not like other boys” or are offended when I don’t immediately trust their intentions. I have been hurt over and over again. I have been judged based not on who I am, but whether or not they can get me to sleep with them. I only talk to small handful of my guy friends and the rest I lost because of whether or not I chose to fuck them.

At the same time, I kept most of my girl friends. Even though I have dated a few of them it never impacted our relationships. Even girls who are gay know that being friends doesn’t mean I owe them. Even if we did date, I can still feel comfortable getting drinks with the girls I love. They still hold my eyes when I talk to them.

I've been called a dyke, a lesbian, a man-hater. I think of the men who hurt me, who have spoken over my head, who have given me their full opinion even though I never asked for it. I was hated by basically everyone. I was sad and lonely so often thought I’d never feel happy again. I have been called a slut by boys that don't understand that who I choose to sleep with is just that: my choice.

I’m not sorry. I love so many people, and many boys are wonderful and charming and excellent. I’m not sorry I flinch away from a friendship. I’m not sorry that I will be cold or unaffectionate or scared of getting too close. I'm not sorry if you imagine I'm something I'm not. I'm not sorry if you ask for something that I won't give you.

It’s just that, since I was five, I was told I was born to break hearts.

If I am Pandora's Box, do you still want to open it?

I realized I had severe trust issues the day a stranger offered me shelter from the pouring rain. It was a simple, kind gesture that I was so doubtful of, I chose to walk in the rain instead, soaking me from head to toe.

I have stopped giving the benefit of the doubt to anyone since god knows when, and it’s starting to eat me inside because I keep pushing away the only people whom I truly ever care about.

I do not know when I started building a wall so that no one will ever be able to come in. I am cold on the exterior, but it is not an act or a pretense to be so aloof to increase my allure. I’m not doing it on purpose. It’s like an innate defense mechanism that I can’t seem to override.

I have watched a loved one attempting to take her life for an unrequited love, and it was not romantic at all. The pain which I felt when I came to know what she did and the emotional turmoil the family had to go through was indescribable, and it got me questioning the necessity of being in love. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I don’t want to be in love. It’s that I’m too afraid to trust it.

I’m harsh, defensive, and have a seemingly impenetrable barrier, but it is not meant to keep you at bay. I’m only being careful. The fact that I lashed words out at you does not mean I do not care.

Please don't misconstrue my need for freedom and a life alone as me pushing you away. I've been alone for a very long time, anything else is a change I'm not sure I can handle. I'm not running away because I dislike you, but I need to be certain before there are plans for anything past the weekend.

It takes a while for me to let my guard down. Each time you feel discouraged and don’t know how else to get me to open up, don’t give up. I don't know how to get myself to open up either. Perhaps this is the only way I can tell you how I honestly feel, since it is so difficult for me to open up to you.

Whenever I try to open up, I have a strong urge to run away.

That “wall” which I have built was not only to protect people from coming in, but to protect them from me, from the hurt which I can cause because of what I’ve done in the past. I can be sweet and caring and full of love, but that also comes with the anger, distrust, and snarkiness that is so ingrained in my nature.

So tell me: If I am Pandora's Box, do you still want to open it?

I want to be your number one

I want to be somebody’s number one. I want to have that one person I can guarantee will always be there for me, will always rub my scalp when I’m sick and tickle my back, will shack up with me during a natural disaster, will carry me through glass (metaphorically speaking, of course) whenever I’m feeling depressed and don’t want to get out of bed. There’ll be no worry if I’m going to brave things alone. I’ll have a teammate, a partner to cushion the blow.

I’m beginning to see the point of having a relationship. More and more, it seems like their purpose is not to necessarily provide you with love but to keep you far away from hate. As you get older, life begins to show you its true colors and sometimes those colors look like shit. That’s why it’s important to have someone by your side who always reminds you of beauty. No matter how dreary things get, you’re never far away from seeing something exquisite.

You start to feel your soul wither if you don’t have love around you. It’s a subtle decay but it’s there. People have so much of it to give and if they aren’t given an outlet, it becomes locked inside of you and suffocates the heart. You need a release. You need to put this love away somewhere. I can feel it aging me, making me bitter. Please someone take it from me. Quick.

I want to go to a party with someone I love and know that we’re going to go home together at the end of the night with our limbs stretched out in the backseat of some cab. We’d nod off with the streetlights reflecting on the window and wake up when we arrived home — the place we share together. The place where we cast spells with our love and cook dinner together and build forts in the living room and listen to music and drink too much wine and fall into bed with contentment. Yes, that’d be a nice place to go home to.

I’m not the young ripe thing I once was and I’m beginning to understand that this world was not meant to be experienced alone. Someday I won’t have my looks, someday I will get sick, someday I will die, and I just hope that I can leave this world knowing that I made someone’s heart go pitter-patter. I changed someone’s life, I was their “in case of emergency” contact. I was the person they thought of when they went to bed and the first person they thought to call in the morning. I want to know that I was loved by someone so passionately, that I shook them to their core and made them happy to be alive.

Someone will have noticed me.

To those I've casually dated:

I would ask how it’s going, but I already know. I know because I’m not afraid to look you up, or say hi, or meet you for drinks. I know because keeping up with you doesn’t torment me. I’m glad to know you’re doing well; I’m glad you’re there to retweet my tweets. I’m glad we never made it to the point of no return. I'm glad that even when we did, we managed to circle back to civility and friendship.

What we had wasn’t epic, and it certainly wasn’t eternal – but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t special. We swapped stories and spit; most times, we shared more than that. Beds. Meals. Toothbrushes. Homes. We met each other’s friends, and sometimes even each other’s families. That was good enough, wasn’t it? Great, even. We devoured each other’s details; we ate up the minutiae like every date was Christmas. My mind felt more full when I left you; it was overflowing with wonder. You never gave yourself away and I’d think, “As it should be.”

Of course, it was far from perfect. You’d hurt me once in a while; maybe you’d neglect my birthday or our rendezvous would become infrequent; then nonexistent. We became too indifferent to argue about anything. I wanted to hate you, but I’d have to love you first – and maybe I never quite got there, did I? What a relief.

Don’t get me wrong. I considered it in the most casual way possible. I really Liked You. But saying, “I Love You,” and meaning it, that’s heavy. We were too fun for that. We Liked Each Other Too Much. Seems silly, seems almost childish, but we couldn’t love each other because we liked each other. ‘Like’ is a pompom, it’s a firework. It’s celebratory and exciting. But love? Love is a tattoo. Love is a 16-car pileup. Love is a scar. Permanent; crippling; ugly.

We never made it there, but that’s okay. We made it to other places. We made it to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dallas, but never to our final plans in Chicago. We made it to my bedroom, where you made me watch Pawn Stars for the first time. We made it to unmarked bars, to outdoor campfires by the lake, to the beach. We made it to the underside of bridges. We played poker, we played phone tag. We made out in the rain and in the middle of sidewalks for so long that it went from clichéd to avant-garde and then back again. We got kicked out of places together; we got locked out of places together. That certainly counts for something.

You taught me what People I Loved couldn’t – that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. That I don’t have to regret my choices. Sometimes, I made pretty good ones – like dating you. I learned that dating should feel good. It shouldn’t cause your teeth to gnash; it shouldn’t wrack you with anxiety. It didn't have to be all or nothing. You taught me that the default after the regression of a relationship isn’t complete and utter destruction. It can be a friendly text, a retweet, a thumbs up when one of us accomplishes something we’ve been working at for years.

Thanks for giving me memories, giving me your friendship, giving me hope. I’m always rooting for you.

XO (Drinks soon?)

Dear Douchebag, Thank You.

Dear Douchebag,

I could sit here and make a list of every single reason I hate you and why you should be unable to reproduce…but being bitter is no fun. Instead, I will say thank you for all you made me suffer through because I am so much better for it.

First of all, thank you for making me feel worthless. Without your hurtful comments or all the times you ignored me, I may have never seen the value in compliments or appreciate someone taking the time to pay close attention to me. I may have never felt the compassion of someone who tries to understand me and all the crazy things that I do. I may never have learned to love my own quirks instead of trying to hide them.

Thank you for making me cry. Without that pain, I may not have known the comfort that best friends can bring in times of heartbreak. I may have never learned how valuable these friendships were and possibly taken their constant love and support for granted. As they say, we can't appreciate the rainbow without a bit of rain. Thank you for being the thunderstorm.

Thank you for playing games with my heart. Without your wishy-washy, fickle attitude regarding our relationship, I may not have recognized genuine love when it presented self in my life. I may have set aside those who really cared and instead settled for someone who just considered me another level of some game. I may never have learned how deep the love of friends and family really runs. Without you, I would never have learned how important it is to love those around and to learn how to be truly loved. Not lusted after.

Thank you for disrespecting my body. Without your objectification and infatuation with “going as far as you could” with me, I may not have ever felt the respect of someone who understood my beliefs on waiting until I was ready. I may not have seen myself as the beautiful person that I am, and instead felt hollow and empty. I may have only seen myself as a pretty face, but only after putting a lot of time and effort into hiding behind a mask. Thank you for helping me realize that there is more to me than surface appearances. I am a deep, complex individual that I may not have known without your lack of respect.

And finally, thank you, thank you , thank you for walking out my door and never coming back. Without your abandonment, I may  have never felt the love and happiness that comes with a relationship that can withstand anything. I may never have learned all of this about myself. I may never have come to appreciate the good, the bad, and the ugly in life.

I wish you all the sweet nothings of the world.

Sincerely,

A valuable, strong, happy, beautiful woman

When does love happen?

Is love the result of the first night spent in the same bed? Or maybe that night is a result of the love. Perhaps it happens the first time you meet their parents – maybe you fall in love with them first, sort of as a prerequisite to falling in love with the one you’re really with.

I guess one could argue that it happens all at once, in one moment. That maybe you go to bed after a night of binge watching Marvel movies and wake up the next morning completely overwhelmed with this feeling. And there was no exchange of words or sex or cupcakes to explain this sudden, extreme change of heart. Maybe it was just a really good night’s rest. Maybe it happens during your late-night X-Men session. When their eyes are glued to the screen with their mouth open slightly and they reach to grab a handful of popcorn, and it takes three tries until their hand finally finds the bowl and not your pant leg. Maybe this is the moment that the lightning strikes.

Maybe there is no lightning, but a steady flow of sunbeams that have always been present. Maybe there are only triggers, and that overwhelming feeling, that panic attack-esque feeling of being in love for the first time, is really us just realizing we’ve been in love all along. Maybe there is no one moment we fall in love, or we just don’t feel it anyway, but we feel the moment that we realize we’ve been feeling the way we have because we’re in love.

I tend to believe that love is similar to grief, and happens in stages without our knowledge. And it happens at different paces for different people – for some it may only take a few days, for some, weeks or months, in some rare cases it may even take years.

Maybe the stages are the same as grief; maybe in the beginning we are in total and complete denial that we are in love, and we try to convince ourselves otherwise. Maybe it’s denial because this feeling is too great, and this person really knows how to tell a story, and they clean up too nice, and their hair is too perfect, and they’re too kind to others, and they are asking you too many questions about your job, and your major, and your feelings, and your family, and your passions for you to actually be in love with, let alone for them to actually be in love with you.

Maybe by the end, we do really learn acceptance – maybe in the sense that we accept them for the little things; leaving the volume on the TV a little too high, the occasional hair on the soap bar, the fact that they don’t wait until the commercials to start telling you about their day, and by the time the commercials do come on, the story is over, it was anti-climactic, and now you have no idea who the true monsters turned out to be or how the Doctor managed to save the day.

But maybe we learn acceptance on an even deeper level. Maybe they’re not the ones we really need to accept. Yeah, they do clean up nice. But that bow tie wasn’t straight when he first put it on. And maybe they are a really captivating storyteller. But it’s charming the way you take a year to tell a story, needing to tell every detail, stuttering and tripping over words, getting so animated, and ultimately forgetting where you’re even going with it, and by the time you get to the end, you’ve either lost everyone or they’re completely underwhelmed and it wasn’t really worth the effort it took to tell, or listen to. Maybe he knows how to entertain an entire room of people while I sit in the corner and talk with one or two of his friends and manage to win them over but fail when faced with the crowd. Maybe he can run a 5K and barely break a sweat, but I can sit in a coffee shop and write a novel about his kiss when he walks in the door from his run.

So maybe love doesn’t happen the first time you wake next to each other, or when you admit to them how old you were when you had your first kiss, or when they finally have your friends’ stamp of approval, or when your father tells them over dinner how much you cried over your first heartbreak and he vowed to never let that happen from another boy but when we finally accept about ourselves the things we try so hard to force upon others to accept. When we’re finally in love with ourselves – that’s when love happens.

True relationship goals

I no longer want someone who promises to always love me and never leave me, I need someone who understands that life happens and sometimes things don’t work out. I need someone that understands that while we want nothing more than each other, we can survive on our own. I need someone that doesn't make me feel like my life will stop if they walk away. Standing alone is just as important as standing together.

I don’t want someone who sugar coats things and never gets angry with me, I need someone to tell me how it really is and put me in my place. I need you to call me on my bullshit and stand firm in your beliefs. I need to have someone as strong willed and stubborn as I am because I know that I can be wrong. We both will make mistakes and be wrong, but we can understand and accept being corrected.

I don't have to share every interest with you. We don't have to mirror the other's likes and dislikes. I had life before you, I have likes outside of you. Don't change who you are or what you like to please me. Because I certainly won't do that for you. I need to be able to tell you with passion why I love ballet and spill out how a tour jeté makes me feel more alive than anything even when you don't understand. I want to listen to you talk about a baseball team with a record that I don't understand.

I need to be able to go five hours without talking to you and not feel lost or incomplete. I am complete without you. But with you, I want to be so much better. I want to be stronger with you. I will not rely on you to give me self worth or to value my presence. I want to stand beside you. Not below you. Not on a pedestal. We are equals. I want us to grow together and help each other grow individually.

I don’t need you, but I really fucking want you.