I’m nearing 20 years old, and I still have no idea what it’s like to fall in love. What does it mean to fall for someone? And why do we fall for them and not into them so that they may catch us? Perhaps because the very act itself requires sacrifice before you even get into the nitty-gritty details of sharing your life with someone else, as you do when you start dating. You are literally falling for someone else, and in the moment you fall, you give part of yourself to that person, praying to God they see the “fragile” sign strung across your heart and act accordingly.
You see, falling into someone is more of a forceful action—it’s not an act of love, it’s an act of ignorance or misinterpretation. It's something we experience on the crowded city streets in our tipsiest moments or when we’re not paying attention. And if we’re lucky enough to be caught, it’s just for a brief moment before our big hero manages to get us back on our feet and bristles away, already forgetting our interaction. While our body is responsible for falling into someone, it’s our heart that dictates when we fall for someone.
And since I tend to have awkward, messy run-ins with people enough as it is—falling into them and whatnot—I can only imagine how messy and awkward it must be to literally fall for someone. Do their words sound like a melody? How long do you lie awake with thoughts of them? How often do you feel their touch, say their name, or show them you care with little gestures? All this and more lies ahead for me, and though I may be the same age as people getting married (yup, it happens), I am in no hurry.
You see the best part is that I don’t know when I’m going to fall, be it today, tomorrow, or five years from now. Heck, it could have even been yesterday, and I’m just so blind I didn’t recognize it for what it was. For now I’m just focusing on me and the type of person that I want to present to the world. I won’t change for anyone but myself, but I know that it won’t matter to him anyway. You can’t choose who you fall for, just as you can’t change them.
In a world where people are constantly dating, breaking up, divorcing, etc., falling in love seems to hold little meaning. But for me it does. I almost revel in the fact that I have yet to experience it because I am enjoying my life just fine now and am proving to myself that I don’t need anyone else to fill my life with joy. And that’s something I will always be proud of. It means I get to sit here all day pondering the way people “fall” for someone, imagining all the possible ways it could happen to me. It means I get to hold onto my childhood a bit longer, believing that fairytales really do exist and that my happily-ever-after is out there, as naive as that sounds. It means I get to do stupid things and not worry about who’s watching. It means I get to fall in love with other things in my life, like books, countries, and songs. But mostly it means my best days are still ahead of me and that my life is only just beginning.
