I was born to love.

I have love for places that I have explored, interests and passions that I have pursued, yes, I even love for the experiences in my life that have helped me learn who I am and what this life has to offer.

But most importantly, I have a love for people. There is something so beautiful to me about the love shared between two people. This isn’t necessarily a physical love, but an emotional, intellectual, and a spiritual love that can either offer us a sense of stability or knock us off our feet and force us to reevaluate our lives. To love someone is to be their biggest advocate, to support them and their beliefs, to be both the anchor that keeps them grounded and the wings that help them take flight and utilize their full potential.

Love is patient… love is kind… but love is not relying on someone else to complete you.

I believe that this is where the idea of “soulmates” becomes blurry. It seems that there is a preconceived notion about what it means to find “the one,” that the person you end up with is someone who completes you. But this isn’t the case—love is about two whole people finding one another and having a relationship that benefits them both. They are not dependent, but know that they have the support that they need whenever they feel as though they can’t stand on their own. Love isn’t about two incomplete people finding one another and becoming whole.

With that being said, I haven’t been single for a substantial amount of time since… well, since middle school. A time when we were going through some of our biggest transitions and transformations, when we were still trying to figure out just who we are. Because of this, I’m not so sure I have been able to cultivate myself enough to become whole enough to love.

That isn’t to say that I don’t know how to love, and it isn’t to say that I am not capable of love. But when it comes down to it, I have been known to lose myself in the midst of trying to keep a relationship alive. I put the person that I love before myself or anything else, and I lose focus on what it is that I want to do in life, what would be the best route for me to take. I always say that you should never rely on others for your happiness; I do know, however, that it is the happiness of others that ultimately brings me happiness.

Somehow, in the midst of loving, I realized that I wasn’t as complete as I could be. As I reflect on the past few years of my life, I see that many of the decisions that I have made in my life tend to revolve around the person I am with. I dedicate myself to keeping the other person happy, for I always thought that it was my duty as a girlfriend. Duty. Job. Mission. Responsibility. Call it whatever you want, but it is something that has dictated my life for the past few years.

We are at such a crucial time in our young lives. As I enter my third year of college, I am hit with the realization that so many of my contemporaries are certain of who they are, what they want to do, and where they want do go. I feel as though I am far behind and that I have yet to figure out what exactly it is that I want to do because I have been so wrapped up in trying to please others.

This is a time for us to focus on ourselves and solely ourselves. We have a duty to no one but ourselves. Our only job is to focus on our future and make the most of our education. Our only mission is to finish our homework, participate in our organizations, groups, sports teams, internships, work our part-time jobs, and learn from all that we do. We are not responsible for anything that deviates from benefitting us.

As Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in my favorite book Eat, Pray, Love, “When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”

Never again will I rely on someone else to complete me. It’s my time to focus on my future and do whatever it is that I need to do in order to get there.

And when I find love again, I know that I will be complete enough to accept the kind of love that I deserve.