Almost all of us have experienced heartbreak to some degree – whether it’s losing a partner to a breakup, or losing a family member to an illness or accident, heartbreak is inevitable. It’s inevitable that you’re going to fall in love, and there’s a chance that that love can crash and burn and cause all sorts of heartache – believe me, I’ve experienced it in my short eighteen years of life so far. Despite these inevitabilities, it’s incredibly important to keep not only an open mind about love, but also an open heart.
Loving someone outside of your family is one of the scariest and most difficult things to do in life; you’re trusting your heart, the most vulnerable part of yourself, in someone else’s care, and you’re praying every night that they don’t leave you behind in the dust or stab you in the back. You never know what is going to happen next. To quote Cristina Perri, “An open heart is an open wound;” but that doesn’t always have to be the case.
Falling in love can be incredibly painful. You can spend so much time giving yourself over and over to someone, and not every time will that someone do the same in return; that’s just an unfortunate fact of life. If you devote your entire soul into sharing your life with someone you deem special, only to find that they stopped finding you special, or that they never found you special to begin with, so much pain and suffering will enter your life through the void that used to hold your happiness and love. Someone can say so many meaningful things to you, but when those things lose their meaning, it’s going to hurt, and it’s going to hurt a lot. It may hurt so much so that you may swear off from finding love again because you’re too scared to open yourself up to someone new.
Please, don’t give up on finding love.
While yes, it’s incredibly scary to fall in love, it’s also one of the most rewarding experiences that life has to offer. Waking up to that special someone every day for the rest of your life, seeing them under the alter on your wedding day, or even just coming home after a long day at work and seeing them on the couch waiting for you with a glass of Chardonnay is a dream come true for most people. Falling in love can bring so much happiness into your life. Falling in love brings a new best friend into your life, someone who you can share both the good times and bad times with, and all the times in between; it can bring you a family, someone to depend on when times get tough who you know will love you no matter what happens. Falling in love can make you more considerate of others, since you no longer have just yourself to think about; it makes you appreciate the little things in life more, especially in a long-distance relationship. Falling in love can bring you such an endless amount of joy, which is why it’s so important to keep an open mind about falling in love.
Don’t give up on finding love, whatever you do. Regardless of your track record with love, whether it be successful or tragic, I have faith that one day, we will all find a forever love. It doesn’t have to be right now, but one day, we will find that forever love.