For only being an 18 year old girl, I think a lot about love. I fall asleep at night to the soothing feeling of my hair dancing between the fingers of a man who exists only in my dreams. Every morning I wonder what it is like to be greeted by twinkling eyes and to feel a sleepy smile pressed against my cheek, instead of the warm ray of sunlight that shines through my window onto my half-empty bed. I can never look away when I see couples doing a regular daily routine, yet have arms interlocked and are laughing after leaning in to whisper something that is shared only between them. To love and to be loved, knowing that connection remains the same, if not stronger, once they split ways after a kiss goodnight. I consider them the lucky ones.

Don’t get me wrong - this is not a cry of desperation and it was not written by the means of loneliness. My life is full of gratitude and joy from the people I have around me, and I have experienced what it felt like to meet somebody I thought I was going to love forever. There are no romantic intentions linked to the outcome of this article, I’m just a girl writing about the day that I do meet the face that represents all that I love in life.

I should start by saying that it is not so much the face that matters but what is hidden behind it. Now I can’t sit here and list every quality that I expect to find in the person I’m going to marry, because if I already know everything about them, where is the surprise? But every girl has her own dreams about love, and mine has changed over time. I used to be one of the millions of little girls that expected my love story to be the same as Cinderella’s - that my dream guy was going to be tall and handsome, and that we would meet in such a magical way as dancing together at a formal ball. When I was eight, I thought that was all it took for me to want to be with him forever.

But I never knew what true love was until my grandma got sick, and my grandpa spent every day by her side until her very last. Being her lover, caretaker, husband, and friend - that was true love and devotion in its most genuine form. Suddenly, happily ever after wasn’t about ball gowns and love at first sight; happily ever after was when your life began the day that you met them and they were still by your side on the day that it ended.

I no longer put a face to the guy I see in my dreams, or imagine qualities that I want him to possess. Don’t limit yourself to a numbered list in your mind of what you want your future to look like, because sometimes the best things for you are the things you never would have expected.

It’s safe to say that everyone wants someone who is honest, loyal, and loving - those are things that every partner should be anyway. But I want to find somebody who makes me feel alive, where every day with them is an adventure that humbles me to who I am but frees me to everything I could ever want to be.