I Don’t Want Perfect, I Just Want You

I’ve never wanted a perfect love. Perfect love isn’t real. Falling for someone isn’t like the movies, where you find your person and your hearts tie together effortlessly with a little pink bow. It’s not like all of a sudden the sky opens and you and this other human start skipping, hand in hand, towards a beautiful sunset. It’s not like you find somebody whose pieces completely fit with yours without any adjusting or bending or twisting.

Love is complicated—two people shifting to accommodate for one another, bumping, disagreeing, pushing, fighting, falling.

And I want that kind of love, an imperfect love, with you.

See, I don’t want perfect. I never did. I don’t want a person who fits with me completely, leaving no room for us to change or grow. I don’t want someone who’s always going to agree with me, who’s never going to challenge what I say or push me to become better. I don’t want someone that makes life static and easy—I want to bump heads, I want to push each other’s buttons, I want our life to be flawed but fun, and passionate as hell.

I don’t want perfection. That’s not interesting. I want late nights and arguments, long talks and moments where we just lay and look into each other’s eyes. I want all your hotheadedness and my stubbornness mixed together, our fiery moments and our loud voices learning to adjust and speak our minds with care.

I want all the ways that you’re human—your sins, your inconsistencies, your fears, your failures. I want all of you, the real you, and I want to love you fully.

See, searching for a ‘perfect’ love has never mattered to me. It’s never been about someone who would match this silly list of criteria or be exactly who I always dreamed of. I haven’t spent my life wishing for a prince or a man to save me. I haven’t hoped that I’d find this ideal man who could have all the answers and never leave me wondering.

I don’t want perfect, I just want you.

You, with your brokenness and bad habits. You, with the tendency to raise your voice and your strong, calloused hands. You, with your gentle kisses and dry skin and tiny, one bedroom apartment and big dreams.

I want all that you come with—your baggage and past mistakes, the ways you’ve been hurt, the long list of fears, and the way you’re hesitant now, because of your past love.

I want you and all the ways you’ll mess up when loving me. The way you’ll doubt me or question my decisions, how you’ll be scared to let me in or pull back when I get too close. I want all of that. Because you’re human and I know it’ll only bring us closer. Because I know you’ll be imperfect, and I’ll be imperfect, and somehow we’ll meet in the middle, both fighting our flaws to come together.

I don’t want perfect. I don’t want easy. I don’t want someone who’s going to put me as the center of the universe and worship the ground I walk on.

I just want you. You, with the way you laugh too loud and already take up too much space in my heart. You, with your little quirks and the way you get shy when we’re first around each other. You, and all the things you do that make you imperfect.

Because I’ve never been chasing perfection; I’ve always been chasing you.

Marisa Donnelly is a poet and author of the book, Somewhere on a Highway, available here.