The transition between childhood and adulthood is such a difficult time. One of my professors was discussing how much we have advanced in mental health. Our constant evolving attitude towards it is literally vital in any society. This professor informed us that the ages 1-12 was once considered childhood, and at the age of thirteen you were considered an adult. There was no intermediate stage. She went on to say that it took a long time for people to come up with a name for it, which is now known as adolescence. I’m beyond grateful that the stages are more developed and understood. Because I would not want to go through being an adolescent and not labeling the stage in my lifetime for what it is: a difficult transition point where you go from being all you’ve known and mirroring your parents and elders into becoming who you have to be in order for you to be an active member of society.
With this in mind, I need you to think about what love means to people at different ages. What love meant to you in the past, and what it means now.
At 6, I thought love was just part of the three words I said to my mommy and daddy.
At 13, I thought love was for family, and for a special person.
At 18, I now think that there are so many different types of love and intensities of it. I couldn’t count on my fingers just how many people I love, but I love them all distinctively.
I’ve always struggled with what it means to love a significant other.
By all means, love is not all that I need to worry about. Personally though, I’m just now getting introduced to what it means to be in a healthy, thriving relationship with just one person. I am starting to develop my understanding of why my parents advised me to not start dating until I am an adult; until I have the means of being completely independent in all aspects of my life.
I never listened to my parents when it came to dating though. I can only assume I didn't because they were adamant on the topic, and it caused me to think about dating more. I tried dating literally all throughout grade school. At first, I started with the impression that I needed to find someone who fit the shoes of the perfect person that I created in my head.
Those thoughts are so ludicrous to me now, but it wasn’t then.
To make matters worse, once I realized that those thoughts were stupid, I pictured my perfect relationship with someone, as opposed to the person themselves. Again, fairly stupid.
I am genuinely annoyed with myself for having both of these mindsets. And now I understand why every relationship I have had was either finite or not the least bit authentic.
Technically, I have dated three people. I started counting after my first kiss with a guy that claimed to want to be with me forever. That was over quicker than I expected it to be.
Then, I dated another person, which was definitely a completely different experience. Not surprising, though, which shows self improvement on my part.
Here's where it gets interesting (I say that sarcastically). I dated my third person. To put in basic terms, the song thank u, next by Ariana Grande is exactly how I feel about him.
And yet, this was just my beginning.
Believe me when I say that I was so ready to have my old definition of forever with my third love. I used my empathy far more than I ever did with him. I had my insecurities and my feelings where I wanted to break up with him, but I suppressed them because I wanted the tiredness of trying to find “the one” to be over. I wanted to be his girl for once, and for a long time. Crazy how beautiful I felt, even now. I thought he was providing me the love story that I wanted, with an amazing moral. A message I could send to my descendants- scratch that our descendants- that we found love early and we’ve been happy ever since we were eighteen. That clearly didn’t happen.
This particular broke up took me a while to bounce back from, but I’ve always been resilient. I've always thrown the positive traits at my significant other, and blamed them for my happiness, when in all actuality we were both supposed to be great and helping one another.
I've been preserving my happiness and have decided to give myself the credit ever since. I can now say with a smile on my face that I’m going to find someone. He wasn’t it and that's OK. I wish him the best.
I talk about him, still, because he was my first realization that love isn’t about finding someone to fill shoes. Standards are temporary.
Love is about knowing that someone isn’t perfect, but caring less because they’re them.
Love is about witnessing them doing things considered ugly (like farting) or mundane (like struggling to understand their homework, or work in general) and still thinking they’re your everything and more.
Love is about stripping down (literally and metaphorically), acknowledging you’re both vulnerable, but not feeling weak because of it.
Love is about being able to look into each other's eyes, and see a whole damn universe behind them and wanting to explore it.
Love is about seeing memes and posts expressing what “love” is supposed to be or what love is not supposed to be, and having enough faith in the person to give them the chance to prove society and past depictions of their sex wrong.
Love is about fully understanding that love is overrated, and lame, and all these negative connotations, but not giving a single crap because that person is worth everything.
Love is about seeing repetitive behaviors in your partner, but learning new things about them and never finding yourself “bored” because you can never get enough of them.
Love is about making healthy decisions and keeping yourself in mind when you make them, and knowing your partner respects that.
I have such a positive and open outlook on love and you would never guess what I needed to do first in order to feel this way.
I had to start loving the one person in all these ways who is nearly impossible to love.
Me.
And no, not in the generic way. In the ways where I’m not listening to what anyone says about my ugly attributes, and where I am not comparing myself to anyone else. Where I’m the only person in control of who I am, and how I react to other people.
Love is repetitive, but love should never be redundant.
My sister asked me recently about what being in love meant.
I didn’t have a good enough answer until now.
[Picture makes me so darn happy. Holding hands is my favorite symbol. I don't know, there's something that makes my dopamine skyrocket thinking about it. Even platonic holding hands. It's unification and intimate regardless of the predicament it's in. This particular photo caught my eye. Simply because it's someone's art, and the way it's presented is also stunning to me. Enjoy. https://www.danielarsham.com/collection/holding-hands-crystal ]