This is love.

They say there are three types of love you must experience before you can really ever fall in love for good. The first time is young and innocent. You call each other on the phone every night, spend every waking moment with each other, share all your secrets. This person is your best friend and you both think that it will last forever. When you start to get older, you both realize that things are changing but neither of you want to say anything because you don’t want to hurt the other and lose your best friend, the one person that makes sense in your life. So you shy away, trying to distance yourself, not realizing that it hurts the other person so much more. But then it happens, when you’re sixteen and starting your first day of Senior year in twelve hours, you’re sat in the middle of your bed crying your eyes out because it feels like your heart has literally ripped in two. You look at all the pictures, the letters, listen to all the songs on repeat and hug the pillow that was once his. And you wake up the next day, fix yourself up, and step out of the car and walk into that same building you’ve been walking into for four years. But something is different about that morning. For the first time since starting high school, you are strong and independent. You smile and laugh and never falter, though your friends are on egg shells, just waiting for you to crumble. You are happy and you smile because you know he is happy too.

The second love you’ll ever experience is perceiving someone as perfect only to realize, there is no such thing as perfect. You’ll fall so in love with someone you never thought you could love. They will be everything you hate in someone, right down to the way they pronounce a word. But you’ll still love them regardless. You’ll love them at seven in the evening when the sun is starting to set and you’re outside playing soccer. You’ll love them when it’s three in the morning and you’re admiring the way the colours of the fire behind you dance on his face as he’s fast asleep and it’s pouring rain. You’ll love them when you’re both sat in the middle of the road crying because you love each other so much it makes you crazy. You’ll love them when they’ve moved on and still give you a small, halfhearted smile. When you lay in bed for three days straight shrouded in complete darkness and silence, unable to produce anymore tears because they have drained you completely. But one day you wake up and realize that you can’t cry over someone who couldn’t love you the same. And just because they didn’t love you the same, doesn’t mean they didn’t love you with all they had. Eventually the smiles you receive from them will stop feeling like salt on wounds, and you’ll be able to pass them on the street and give them a genuine smile while they still give you a halfhearted one.

They say the third kind of love you must experience is loving someone who is just like you so that the right one can come in and show you all the difference you’ve been missing. No one ever says if this is a certain person or not, but I’ve decided it’s yourself. You have to learn to love yourself so much so, that when the right person does come along, you won’t be afraid that you won’t be good enough for them. You won’t be afraid to fall in love because you’ve taken the time to repair yourself and know how to love like you’ve never been hurt before. A friend, my very best friend, once told me that you have to be broken in order to love. That all beautiful things are broken and you take those broken pieces, and you put them in the middle of the table along with the other person’s broken pieces, and together you make something new, something unbreakable. And when you do that, nothing else matters.

I’m still learning to fix and love myself, but each day is a day that i’m closer to finding the person with whom I’ll repair our broken pieces. There are a lot of things I still don’t understand about love. Like why my parents stay together when they are so completely opposite. Or why some people’s parents divorce and never remarry because they are still so very much in love with each other. Or how some people manage to stay together for over fifty years. And why some people don’t believe in love at all. I guess there are two things I’ve learned about love. None of it is ever the same for each person, and you can’t define it. Some people believe that you just settle for who makes you smile most at the end of the day. Others believe in prince charming and princesses locked away in tall towers. But there are few who believe that it was all predestined. That somehow, someway, they have been linked to this special person all their lives and it’s just a matter of finding them. Like the Origin of Love or the Red Strings of Fate, they believe their soul mate is out there searching for them too. And once they realize this, they decide to stop settling for just anyone. If they don’t feel in it their mind, body, soul, and bones the minute they see them, they won’t invest any romantic time. Because regardless, everyone needs a friend. I’m almost positive I’ve found my soul mate, I just haven’t met him yet.

That same wise friend once told me that: “All those scars from all that shit? Always remember that it’s not the scars you have, it’s how you wear them that makes you who you are. Wear them right.” And when I told him what was the hardest I’ve ever cried and the widest I’ve ever smiled, he told me he could actually feel what I was feeling. He said he enlightened, joyous, saddened, then pained. I said “You’re forgetting one. Free.”

Never give up on your dreams for anyone or anything, love yourself before you forget how to. And if you get lost along the way, always remember that whatever road you take, you will end up in the right place. You are never far from home, you are never lost, you are never alone.