Don’t Be The Type Of Person Who’s Afraid Of Love

I know you, I know your type. You tip-toe around the people who show potential interest. You keep a fair distance from the people who brush their fingers against yours and the ones who look at you in the way everyone wants to be looked at. You do all you can to push away the people that could love you and you keep close the ones you know that don’t care.

You’re afraid, and that’s okay. It’s not a secret that people are fickle. That people will tell you to leave with the same mouths they used to press kisses along the length of your neck. That people will count your ribs with the same fingers they’ll use to shove under the bones and pull.

And so, you stay away. You stay away because it’s logical. because you’ve always been the logical person. The one that weighs out the pros and cons of being in a relationship. You’re the person that wants to be independent, to have a career to not be tied down by someone who will hurt you and then leave you. So, you think that if you keep people at arms length and refuse to stay the night or to spill out of your mouth your darkest fears, that you won’t fall in love. Here’s the thing though, you don’t have a choice in love. You’ll fall in love and you’ll fall hard.

One day, you’ll meet someone who makes you feel things you never knew you could feel for another person, they’ll make you build your dreams around them, make you count time by the way their heart beats and they’ll make you feel like you’re drowning but that you don’t mind. They’ll know your favorite songs by heart even though they hate it and they’ll know how you don’t like raisons in your bread.

They’ll lie in bed with you till 3 am in the morning, listening to all your and aspirations and they’ll say to you, in the cool of the night, you can do it. One day, you’ll meet someone and you’ll forget all the reasons you’ve given yourself not to fall in love. You’ll let your guard down, you’ll stay the night, you’ll begin to shift your schedule around for that person and later on, they’ll break your heart.

They’ll break your heart and that’s okay. It’s okay because you’ll learn that you lived more in the 4 months that they loved you than you’ve ever lived in your life. You’ll learn that opening your heart doesn’t mean only opening yourself up to heartbreak but also to the the wonders of love. It opens yourself up to 4 ams drinking wine and giggling at them trying to impersonate The Godfather. It opens yourself up to having someone other than yourself, if only just for that moment, to tell you that you are good enough for all your dreams. It’s okay because them leaving you means you’re one person closer to sharing your life with the right one.

They say it’s better to have loved than to not and many people call bullshit. It’s understandable because you’ve invested all this time into the other person; you’ve learnt the language of their face, what it means when they scrunch up their nose and when the mumble out the words ‘s’okay’. You’ve spent late nights talking about what could be and will be, you’ve met their parents and all their siblings love you.

You’ve created what could be the perfect future and they ruin it. They wake up one morning and tell you that they don’t need you. You felt liked you belonged somewhere and then they went away. So yeah, it does seem like a big waste of time and a shit-load of unnecessary hurt.

But what they say is true, it is better to have love than not to because being in love teaches you the things your school and parents forgot to teach you. Love teaches you that you can be in love and still have a career. It’s not one or another. It teaches you how to not restructure your life completely to fit someone in but instead to give them bits of yourself. It teaches you that all that heartbreak you felt over stupid hookups and people that used you will all be worth it when 3 or 5 or 10 years from now you’re holding hands with the person you’re meant for.

See the thing is, being in love doesn’t mean you’re weak or that you’re not independent. It doesn’t mean you’re giving up on yourself or selling out or becoming every typical 20 something year old. Being in love is knowing that someone can and may hurt you but being strong enough to let your walls down because you know the real thing will be worth it.

I used to think that only the weak wear their hearts on their sleeves and fall in love. But now I know, it’s not the ones that are in love who are weak but instead the ones who are too afraid to. So, don’t be afraid of love. Fall in love, fall hard and when you’re lying on the ground, bruised and broken, pick yourself up and repeat until you find the person who will tell you in the late of night I’m here to stay.