When True Love Does Exist

For so long I have yearned for a love that would move mountains, for a love that seems like it has only ever been sung about; a love that brings tears to the eyes of those who witness it, who appreciate it and envy it. I always thought love was a fleeting substance, like the universe was teasing its occupants with this unobtainable feature, this fictional substance.

I look at myself, almost 23 years old. I look at the years of my adult life, look at the love I thought I had, the love I lost, and the foolishness around the emotion. I have a lot of thoughts running through my mind at all hours of the day and I would be lying if I said the majority of them didn’t settle on the topic of love. Who is worthy of love? Who deserves my love? Who’s love do I deserve? When will love happen? What is the true meaning of love? Will love be enough?

I like to think I have my priorities straight when it comes to the thought of love, a beautiful and vibrant emotion that means so much more than a union between two like-minded individuals. But those four little letters mean so much.

I love my friends, and I would do anything for them, but it is through their secret little actions that the love becomes a blinding energy when we are together. I love the way my best friend always knows how to make me smile and I love how alike we are. I love how we read each other’s minds. I love her cute little laugh. Such a love, such a bond, that is rare for some to understand without feeling it themselves. Yet her and I are not in love. We do not have a desire to join our hands and become one. We both understand that we are two pieces of the same soul, or soul family, and we love each other in ways that only family can.

But then there is that red hot love, the emotion you feel when he looks at you, when you make eye contact or he puts his arms around you. But this love is the one you have to look out for. It consumes, and although it can be invigorating, it can also burn. And I have been burnt. But I’ve also seen things that you only read about in story books.

Right after my relationship ended I didn’t want to believe in love. I had thought he was the one, until one day I knew he wasn’t. That one day when I started caring more about appearances than the actual people. I stopped caring about myself, stopped recognizing that I was no longer in love, I was just in love with the idea of it. I pushed the idea around in circles, hoping that the longer I sat on it the more chances I had to fix it. I believed that the “love” I was in was maybe just in need of repair. I believed in fate. I believed in soul mates. Why would the universe send me someone I wasn’t meant to be with? Why was I the one, who wished so long and hard for an endless love, who was slowly watching her vision of love fall apart?

When we parted ways, the idea of romance fell away and I replaced it with a love of a different sort: a love of myself. I threw my mind and emotions into the same energy, but one that filled me with light, with happiness. I began to realize that it wasn’t just about being in love with someone, but it was simply about being in love. With the world, with yourself, with your life.

I fall in love every day, with adorable customers or actions of one of my animals. I love the way I am beginning to surround myself with people who have quirks and qualities that I repeatedly fall in love with, with the stories we share and the photos we’ve taken. I fall in love every time I take another look at those photos, when I remember the emotions felt during those times of bliss. The love felt as we hugged it out or laughed until our sides hurt. That is love, plain and simple. That is love in its purest form, where you love, and you accept, and flaws don’t have any meaning.

But then I see what is missing. It is not for a lack of love, but it is for a lack of the last piece of love. The love that consumes. The love that moves mountains, that people look at and all they can do is stop and smile, because the love is one that is so bright. I hear the songs and part of me has a hard time envisioning this love, but I have always been a hopeless romantic and I have always held the idea of love in my heart. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that I see this love around me, in two, if not more, separate couples that circle in my group of friends. I see this love and it gives me hope that this feeling is more than something just written about in songs.

I know I will find this love because I believe if you dream it, you wish it, you will end up doing it. And I know, with proof shown in the aforementioned couples, that a love like this truly does exist.

You may not believe in love, trust me, I didn’t either. But now I do. And even though I’m not in a relationship, I have to remind myself that there really is no rush because I know that when I do find the person I am meant to be with, we will have a love that moves mountains, a love that others look to because they know it is one for the books.

| cassie

What Will the World Bring

I heard a song yesterday {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1yhczZDfQk} that brought tears to my eyes as I thought about the past couple weeks of heartache I have passed through. Sitting here, I still listen to that song, thinking about the lyrics. All about moving on from heartbreak, the words state, “you can love me or not, but either way I’ve got to wake up to face another day tomorrow morning.” I’ve been battling with my mind for years, and even though in Calgary I am the happiest I’ve ever been, there is still sadness beneath the surface.

Recently I lost a person I still care about deeply. A person who lifted my heart, filled it with joy, and made me strive to be a better person, a person that walked out of my life because of reasons I can’t even fault him for. And although his walking away hurts, more than I thought anything would, this song I discovered has made me realize one thing: Love, in friendship or in more, is a key component, but love or not, life goes on. Although there is pain and heartache, the sun still rises in the East and sets in the West. There is always a new day, and each day the world grants us more and more surprises. Gifts and love from friends, old and new, bring affirmation from those who you’ve come to realize love you as much as you love them.

The way I see it, sadness is a human emotion and it is needed to live a balanced life, but it is important to realize, acknowledge, and move on from it. And although each lyric struck a cord in my heart, the one that rang the truest was the one the title of this post is modelled after. Even with sadness, heartache, and hurt, there is always a new day. And I have decided to begin asking that simple question, “What will the world bring? What will it bring to me?”

Although I sit here, with this song on repeat and sadness heavy in my heart, I know that goodbyes and sadness aren’t always forever. Not when you have something to look forward to every day. And I do. I have every little moment of every new day to look forward to. Because life is something magical and something I don’t want to miss because I’m shut off from the happiness begging to be let through.

Sometimes you just have to realize that life does go on and that the more you fret, the more you live in the past and the more the sadness consumes. Facing another day can be a hard task, especially when the surprises the world grants are not always the happiest ones, but the world is a beautiful place. What’s meant to be will be, and if you let it, the world will bring you wonders big and small.

And who knows, maybe one day you’ll wake up, having healed your heart, having changed your outlook, having grown stronger in your happiness, and that thing, that person, that opportunity you’ve missed so greatly, will have been the amazing surprise the world decided to bring back to you.

| cassie

The Kind of Love You Deserve

You deserve balmy summer nights sitting lakeside with someone who gives you butterflies; nervous fingers reaching to interlock with yours, sweaty palms, gentle squeezes; unashamed confessions of admiration, sincere compliments, persistent and kind honesty.  You deserve a night of stars dancing on rippling water, shivers rolling down your spine, the moonlight illuminating sideways glances and uncontrollable smiles. You deserve inside jokes and laughing your stomach into knots, cheeks red and faces glowing. You deserve a night of childhood stories and secrets shared, weird habits exposed, scars revealed. You deserve falling-irrevocably-in-love moments you thought only true of screenplays and fairytales.

You deserve late Saturday nights watching the sun set and rise again, first and second and twentieth kisses shared among fireflies and twinkling starlight. You deserve enveloping embraces, cool breeze waltzing between your limbs, nose pushed against threads of cotton carrying your new favourite scent. You deserve hours of thoughtful conversation, every sentence punctuated with eskimo-, butterfly-, every-kind-of kisses.

You deserve sleepy Sunday mornings drifting in and out of consciousness, shifting between dreams, always fitting puzzle-piece-perfect against one another upon waking. You deserve dancing in your pajamas while making breakfast, sunlight leaking through the windows, the smell of coffee in the air. You deserve singing 90’s pop songs with spoon and spatula microphones, whirling around one another, cracking eggs and sprinkling spices. You deserve entire days in bed kissing birth marks and scars, tracing constellations out of freckles with your fingertips, learning the taste of each other’s laughter.

You deserve sun-kissed adventures, last-minute and kind-of-irresponsible vacations, booking flights and mapping routes. You deserve overcoming fears and taking risks, venturing into great unknowns together. You deserve salty kisses on tropical beaches and bike rides through small towns. You deserve road trips through deserts and big cities, 30-hour flights across oceans and continents. You deserve card games at bus stops and walking hand-in-hand through seaside markets. You deserve hundreds of different backdrops to your love story and hundreds of different languages to tell it in.

You deserve first, fifth, thirtieth anniversaries, homemade gifts stitched together with love and surprises thought out months in advance. You deserve the overcoming of obstacles together, the ebb and flow of lifelong love. You deserve afternoons painting bedrooms and wiping colours off each other’s earlobes, evenings assembling Ikea furniture with glasses of wine. You deserve building forts out of moving boxes, backyard camping, and picnics on your living room floor. You deserve memories of a quiet afternoon nestled together in bed, shadows dancing on the pages of your books, the feeling that in his arms you’ve found home. You deserve pinky-promises kept and mistakes forgiven, kisses stolen and a hand always held.  You deserve decades strung together with old photographs and love notes, wrinkles carved from laughter.

This is the kind of love you deserve.

| alex

On Hopeless Romantics:

I think most of us, at one point or another, have been hopeless romantics. And to be honest, as a freshly turned 22 year old – I think a small part of me still is. We still crave those cliche movie moments, want hand written letters, wish for a bouquet of flowers just-because. We want poems written about us, dances under starry nights, kisses in the rain, and a song sang to us on quiet evenings. A part of us really wishes for it. (On shooting stars, at 11:11, no doubt.)

But hopeless romantics are just that: hopeless. What the hopeless part of us fails to realize is that people can love you, and not buy you the moon. People can care for you, and not press flowers in books they wrote dedicated to you. People can still be romantic, without taking you on a trip to Paris. Love comes in big and little moments, in extravagant and simple gestures. It comes in holding hands on walks at dusk, in kisses in the morning, in laughing so hard your ribs hurt, in hugs after a long day, in singing loudly to music in the car, in sharing a sip of coffee, in brushing back hair on hot days.

I’m not saying that romance is dead, or that these people don’t exist. I’m saying that you should appreciate the romance in every way possible.

So by all means, be romantic – with your whole entire being if you want. But please remember, that being romantic should never resemble being hopeless.

| danielle

An Open Letter To My Younger Self: Fragility & Relationships

Letter #2: Fragility & Relationships

Dear 17-year-old me,

You’ve probably just started to accept and realize that you love to look up and write down quotations, that you are a sucker for anything sentimental and inspirational, that you are moved so deeply by words. In this constant search for inspiration, you’ve come to understand now that a popular topic of discussion is self-love and its connection to relationships. People are always talking about learning to love yourself, embracing your flaws. And they are always talking about the idea that only through loving yourself can you truly love another person, can you maintain your relationship with them. You believe that this idea is absolute truth, that it is beautiful and positive.

And it is lovely, this idea of being so confident in yourself and so accepting of your flaws that everything else just kind of falls into place. It’s supportive, hopeful, and a beautiful thing to strive for. It’s just not always realistic. Because sometimes circumstances make it extremely difficult to love yourself. Sometimes it’s impossible to have a positive self image. Sometimes people just crumble.

You have yet to become a little bit cynical, to experience anxiety, to sit in a room confronted by your insecurities. But you will live through all of this one day. And I want you to remember in those moments of fear and confusion, in those moments when all you can do is hate yourself and everything that you’re feeling, you are still entirely worthy of someone else’s love.

I think that this idea only being able to maintain a healthy relationship if you love yourself first is deeply flawed. I think that healthy relationships can be maintained in the face of insecurity and self-doubt. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t strive to have a healthy body image, that you shouldn’t strive to have a positive self-image. Because you certainly should. You will feel happier and more confident, and that will serve you well in every aspect of your life going forward. But I just know that you won’t always feel this way; your confidence will waver, your strength will fail. You will get to a point in your life when you will struggle with anxiety, you will entertain the idea that you may have a mood disorder. You will cry constantly, you will question every decision you have to make, and you will hate yourself for it. And because of this idea that you’ve come to accept as absolute truth, this idea of needing to love yourself before another person will love you, you will feel like a burden to your partner. You will feel like you aren’t good enough, like you are an inconvenience. And on top of everything else, someone who considers themselves emotionally and/or mentally fragile should never have to feel as if they are also unlovable.

One day, you will find yourself with someone who supports you endlessly. He will encourage you in all of your dreams and aspirations; he will always withhold judgement; he will be unfailingly present; and, when you are drowning in self-doubt, he will help you to love yourself again. He will crawl into the dark spaces of your mind and sit with you there until you’re ready to be honest about your feelings, he will encourage you to challenge your existing notions of beauty and to confront your insecurities, he will love you when you aren’t strong enough to love yourself, and he will live in constant celebration of your existence.

You are worthy of your own love and respect. But in those moments when you don’t feel strong enough, when your emotions and feelings of self-hatred overpower you, know that you are still worthy of companionship and adoration. It is possible to find solace and encouragement outside of yourself. Having someone who will lift you up in your lowest moments is not a sign of weakness, but an indication of a strong and meaningful relationship. And you will find that relationship one day.

You are smart, full of life, and entirely worthy of love. You are all of those things completely and extraordinarily. In those times when you don’t have the strength to believe in your value, know that your strength will return. You are brave and strong and you will unearth your courage a hundred times over. And one day, when the timing is right and the stars align, somebody will be ardently by your side to help you rediscover it again and again and again.

| alex

On Time:

“Don’t waste your time. Your time is the most valuable thing you have. You will never get it back. So be selfish with it. Don’t just give it away to people who don’t care.”
– Brijesh

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine on relationships and what happens when you give more time to someone than they do for you. I’m sure we have all been through it: with a friend, family member, co-worker, and of course, a significant other. We seem to have all the time in the world for someone and yet we are on the bottom of the list to them. And maybe you’ve been on the other end of things: you’ve been a priority for someone, but they haven’t been one to you.

We spoke about always rearranging schedules to fit others, of how we never got to be the ones who chose, who others had to change their plans for. And Brijesh told me a really beautiful truth: Don’t waste your time on someone who doesn’t care about you. Because the fact is, if you want to make time for someone, you will. And that isn’t a harsh line, because life sometimes has other plans, but when it really comes down to it, you will make time for those you care about. And you know when someone cares or when someone is just blowing you off. Listen to that voice in your head that’s telling you the truth, whether you want to hear it or not.

Time is one of the only things we can really truly give to others. Time is the only thing we won’t ever get back. Time is one of the most important things we have. So if you aren’t happy with someone, don’t stick around. Life is far too short to try to wade through the sadness in a distorted notion of being heroic. There are some things you can’t change, some people who don’t want to change. It’s not up to you to fix them. And you’ll only end up wasting time and getting hurt. And I don’t say this to make you believe that helping someone is wasting time. It’s only a waste of time if they don’t want help and you end up sad.

So surround yourself with people who love spending time with you, who don’t make you feel less, or sad, who believe in everything you do, and encourage you. With people who inspire you, who you have the same interests with, who enjoy the same routines and adventures you do. And please remember that you are worth spending time with, you are more, you have the ability to be happy, and you really can do anything you want.

So don’t waste time with people who don’t care about you. Give your time to the people you love, and who love you back.

| danielle