If You Want Love, You’ve Got To Sit In the Room Of Love

She said to me, what if I am so very lonely, desperately seeking love and yet I can’t find it? Because I once turned my back on love, am I not meant to find it again? How does one stop feeling lonely? Am I trying too hard to find someone? Maybe I should just let it be and wait for the universe to guide me to him, and not give up. I really don’t know.

I know.

I know that when you are lonely, it makes you desperate, and it eats at you like vermin on a dead carcass. People will issues well-meaning encouragements, reassuring you that it won’t be like this forever, to cheer up a little, to relax. But until they have laid in bed, night after night, explicitly fantasizing about the one who will make love to you, who will see you, who will find meaning in your moan and reassurance in your snore, they will not understand the ache in your bones, your spirit, for a body next to yours.

I know that the harder you look, the more furiously you search, the more it is like gripping at a bar of soap, trying to pick it up off the wet shower floor. You see it, you know how this should work, and yet it works its way free of you because you grasp too suddenly, too hard. It skids away and there are only so many times you have the energy to chase it. Maybe it wasn’t meant for you after all, you think.

I know what it is to attach meaning to the smallest of things – and the biggest of things. To assume that everything is a sign telling you you’re not worthy of what you seek, because when you had it, you let it go. We think the universe is a bank of karma, based on deposits and withdrawals and our bank is all out of love because we used it up already. The man guarding the stash laughs at us when we ask for more, not knowing that love isn’t a finite source.

Love is endless. Boundless. Evergreen.

It’s a free-for-all.

Love isn’t choosy.

If you want love, it is there for the taking. But you’ve got to sit in the room of love, first. You have to actively decide to show up, day-on-day as love itself. Not waiting for it, not looking for it, you have to be it.

If you want love, you have to smile when you wake, mentally declaring, today I am love. Fixing breakfast, you’ve gotta do it with love – take the extra ten minutes to make the French press coffee over the instant, sit down to chew your cereal, happily wash your dishes so that the kitchen is clean when you get home tonight. Demonstrate love for yourself.

Sitting in the room of love means smiling at strangers and asking the man who sells you your Tic Tacs how he is today. It is choosing your favourite album, again. About writing a to-do list for your day, with just three manageable things on it, and a resolution to do something nice for yourself when they’re checked off. You’ve got to ask people how they are and listen to the answer. Text back to the guy who you don’t want to see again, but thought about hanging out with until the real thing comes along. Say no. Be brave, be kind, be firm. Be those things with yourself, too. The universe will give you what you ask for, and by being those things with others you’ll command it for yourself.

Keep giving of yourself. Give to others through your time and your interest, but give to others by nurturing yourself, too. Take the class and sleep the extra hour and dare to hope. Lean in to feeling good, every single day, because what we focus on expands. So focus on love. Focus on the love you have and the love you are, every single day.

You see, the journey has to feel how you want the destination to. If the destination is love, baby girl, every moment up to that has to be love, too.