Love is the most glorious waste of time. Waiting minutes for texts turns into sleepless nights between the sheets. The nights turn into morning cuddles and breakfast Perkins. Days turn into weeks spent on end to counting the months together.

Love will set your heart on fire and then it will burn you. It will scorch you down to the depths of your soul and wake you in the dead of night. It will devalue you, it will make you still. It will make movements hurt. To breathe, to walk, to be.

When the pictures turn into distant memories and your phone doesn’t light up any more, that’s when reality sets in. It’s when texts turn into word bubbles of the past that you’re addicted to reading. It’s the feeling of winning the lottery and then going bankrupt, all because of someone else. You are an addict, and you have no more of your drug. You go through withdrawal. You are a recovering addict. Recovering from the pain of losing your best friend, your idea of forever.

To waste time on love is to have learned lessons, painful lessons. You learn that you aren’t invincible to pain, but you are a fighter. You will pretend you don’t want the earth to reverse time, you pretend that “everything happens for a reason” or some bullshit you saw on Facebook. This part of your life was not a stepping stone, it was a sink hole. It consumed you. You did not deserve to be hurt in such a way, but here you are, in pain because your soul feels so deeply. It feels when the morning kisses become just a little less passionate and the conversations become a little less deep. You feel when the compassion starts to slow and then stops. You are no stranger to someone falling out of love with you, the same way you feel in love with them; slowly, and then all at once.

And even years from now when your heart is still tender and you still love for no good reason, that’s when you know. You know that you wasted time, and you learned lessons. The same lessons you could’ve Googled, or your grandma could’ve told you, but you are fighter, and you fight for what you have because to waste time on love is the greatest waste of time.