Tag Archives: Love

Your Lover is Here For Sure

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“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

I found it at the perfect time. Isn’t that what they say, that timing is everything? He was quiet, and what little things I knew about him weren’t the best. He’d drawn cards from a pile no one should ever touch. And me, well, I’d gone all in on another relationship and had come up short, in the Fall.

It wasn’t love at first sight. There were no instant feelings of, “well maybe this could be forever”.  But there was a certain calm curiosity which left me always wanting more. We met a few times through mutual friends but never acted on anything. We’d share short flirty messages which wouldn’t follow through. Neither of us wanted to make the move because neither of us was sure. I’d always been the girl in a relationship, he’d always been the boy who only let someone in so far.

It took time and it took effort. You see, we were building something deeper and we had to constantly cultivate it. It was a beginning like no other beginning I have ever had. We’d open each other up and make ourselves be honest with ourselves. We would fight, but only to make one another better. We were two people who were never satisfied with just “good”, we wanted ourselves to be great.

You could say I had been waiting my whole life for this. I always thought that if I looked hard enough, love would find me again. There are people who sneak right into your life. While we’re preoccupied staring at something in the distant future, or hung up on the past, They just show up on your doorstep like, “hi there, it’s me and it’s always going to be me…”.

I was twenty when I met my soulmate. He crept in quietly through a door to my heart and made all of my past mistakes fall away. He made me realize not only who I was, but who I was destined to be. He intertwined my fingers with his and refused to let go. And just like that, there he was standing in front of me, making me love him for the rest of my life…

The Laughing Girl

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“She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love… That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don’t have enough of their own.” -Veronica Roth

I remember the first time I heard her laugh. I was twelve, walking through a hallway before I even knew the smiling girl. This infectious happiness danced through the hallways when she opened her mouth to let out the laughter. She was everything you worked so hard in hopes of becoming. She made living life look like an afternoon at the carnival, jumping in head first with all the excitement of the world.

I was twelve the first time I watched the smiling girl wrap her arms around a boy, with all the love and possibility in the world in the palms of her hands. She’d lift her locker open in the middle of the hallway, letting out her singing laugh. She had such a gleam of determination to be happy and to see the good in everything and everyone she touched.

I was twelve when I watched the smiling girls’ heart break. The first time I watched her crumble to her knees and beg. Her laugh fell silent amongst the hallways and emptied lockers that summer. She turned to her friends in her time of need, and they lifted her up as best that they could. She was too young to have her spirit broken by something so small in the grand scheme of it all.

I was fifteen when I realized the smiling girl was addicted to love. Fifteen years old when I realized that the only reason she smiled was for the people around her, and not for herself. She put her heart and her soul into everything and everyone and left so little to herself to come home to. She left her laugh tucked away in our middle school lockers, in her first love, and in her best friends.

I was twenty-one when I felt a real connection to the smiling girl. She worked so hard for the piece of mind of others. She worked so hard for that smile on her face, always deserved, never given. I was twenty-one when the smiling girl told me she still loved the boy she had laughed through the halls with. I was twenty-one when the smiling girl reminded me to be optimistic about love, and that it was never too late to try again.

Over the Hills and Far Away

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“It is a frightening thought, that in one fraction of a moment you can fall in the kind of love that takes a lifetime to get over.”— Beau Taplin

I dialed the phone that afternoon, shaking a little. I try to keep my cool when I confide in him, but this time like many others, I tremble at the dial tone. Seven years of on and off again love and friendship. That is what he was to me. We fell into a pattern of disconnect and reconnect, always keeping one another at bay.

I was in love. Seven years down the line. It wasn’t the young love we’d once shared, but an enamored love in which I was deeply more fond of the circumstances than I was the actual man standing in front of me. The phone picks up after two short rings, and there he is, seven years later the same friendly, “hello”.

You see, we’d fallen into a pattern. We needed each other in a conventional way. The way that a tree’s roots need water to survive, even if it must break concrete to reach it. I confided too much, relying on him to pick me up when everything was falling apart. We would be worlds away, and I would still ask him to call.

That afternoon I fell back in love. Forty-five minutes on the line and five years later, I slipped back into the same pattern. After speaking on a relatively serious topic, he reverted to his charming self. We childishly fought about the past and spoke with a level of excitement about who we were becoming, and when we’d see each other again. Forty-five minutes and I thought, for a second, that maybe we had a chance. I became momentarily hopeful. Maybe I would come home and we’d find ourselves in the right place, at the right time, finally looking to ignite what we once had.

But I was wrong. Our light flirtation that afternoon had caught me up. It only took me forty-five minutes to believe that we were so close to piecing our relationship together again. While I was taking root, he was breaking concrete, searching for his water elsewhere. And maybe I had dizzily fallen for us once again, and maybe, while I believed we were growing together; we’d in fact been growing further and further apart…

Gone Girl

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“I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one’s self-respect.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“Athletic. Outgoing. Looking for a good time.” She writes, perfectly across the “about me” section of an online sugar daddy website. She guides the mouse to a poised and puckered photo of herself in tight workout gear, smiling innocently into the lens as if her charm could grab you through the screen. She had perfected the art, of getting what she wanted. The photo was just the beginning of the complex and self-proclaimed Internet personality she’d worked so hard to create.

I was twenty, the first time I heard a woman vocalize that she, in fact, did not plan to be independent. We grow up in this world where women have had to die for their common rights.  A place where under a quarter century ago, we couldn’t even vote for president.  Being mentored by several headstrong women and respectful men, I never imagined that not being self-reliant would ever be a reality. Staring at this girl who truly believed a man would be her only worth, deeply bewildered me.

It’s 6:03 am and she stares into the illuminated screen of her laptop. Charlie texted her three minutes ago, his flight had landed. She consciously gathers the remnants of the Victoria’s Secret packaging strewn across her wooden dorm floor, a gift note fluttering to the ground reading: “Can’t wait to see you in these” –Steven.

She takes a moment, staring at her dewy complexion, adjusting her belly-bearing top and yoga pants. Her nails are perfectly polished, her hair falling messily at her shoulders. She’s got it down to a science, and she know it. Before she runs out the door, she double clicks her mouse one last time and grabs her keys, solidifying a meeting next week with her fifth beau, Matt.

Castles Made of Sand

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“I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.” — The Kite Runner

We looked at one another but never into one another. We had worked so hard to create the perfect shell of what we believed love should look like. I remember the very first time we locked eyes, over fruity drinks and slurred verb-age lost over the past few years. We thrust ourselves forward, in hopes that we could fill one another’s empty voids, where love once lived. We were lost, however, very convincing. We created elaborate feelings we could delve into so deeply that we could hide from the unspoken truth. The unspoken words which would tell the true story of us.

Have you ever told yourself a lie so many times, that you eventually began to take it as the truth? I remember stepping out of the car, heated from an argument. Frustrated and perturbed I reached for the handle of my apartment, ready to never look back, as he walked to his car. I shut the door behind me and counted to five. Something within me just couldn’t let him go. It wasn’t the love or the lust we’d shared that called me back, it was the sheer effort it had taken to get to this point. It felt like I had worked so long to make him love me, but once it happened I realized it wasn’t right at all.

I open my door and run down the stairs, calling his name as he closed his car door. The question still choking in the back of my mind: why did I chase him one last time?

We’d ignore our frustration with one another with passive aggressive remarks. We’d grab each other’s hands and intertwine them inorganically. We’d hold on to the past and our initial drunken nights when everything felt new and so promising. It’s more lonely than being alone, being with someone who isn’t right for you.

Months later the spark would fade and fade, but we would stubbornly hold on. Our families loved each other, our friends thought we were perfect, but they didn’t see the disconnect. The lackluster push to spark the flame one last time, which would ultimately go unanswered. And the sting of the tears resting on my cheek, asking me why I held on so long.