smile on your own

I have a foolish fairytale idea of love.

I was told that I deserved someone who would make me happy.
Who would treat me better than I had previously been treated.
Who wouldn't cheat or lie, but would take care of me.

I've yet to meet him. 

the truth is, everything only exists as it is perceived.

This also means that everything is your fault.

If you feel alone, if you feel unloved, if you feel you can’t do something, if you feel scared or if you feel you’ve been done some wrong – it’s not that any of those things are true. It’s that you’re allowing yourself to feel that way.

If you are still haunted by a horror of your past – it’s not that the horror was so bad. It’s that you allow yourself to be haunted.

If you are in pain,

it is your fault.

No one has hurt you.
People merely do things
and you have foolishly allowed yourself to be hurt.

Why don’t you make yourself smile?
Maybe it will be true eventually.

Some things that I have learned about love:

It is not fiery.
It is not impassioned. 
It does not change everything about your life. It may not change anything at all. 
It does not make your heart pound 
or your mind race 
or make everything brighter, like some overrated hallucinogen.  
Love is not nearly as glamorous or full of desire and flames as it may seem in the beginning.

 It may burn brightly at first, but fades over time to a stubborn glow.

The truth about love is that everyone imagines it differently.
Everyone means something different when they utter the words “I love you”.

I wrote a piece in March of this year called “The Best Thing About Soulmates is That It Happened To Us.”
it might have been a beautiful piece
if it was still true. 

If two people are meant to be together,
two halves of a whole heart,
soulmates, if you will,
shouldn’t their idea of love be the same?
isn’t that what makes them soulmates?

Apparently not.

They’re just holding on like the rest of us.
Hoping it will last.

Love is not simple, but it is not complex. Love can be difficult. It can be wearisome. Love is not always enough. It lasts because it must, because it is habit. Because it is comfortable. 

Love can very easily change a person. And if the one you love were to leave, you’re not sure who you would be. You would have lost yourself. The process of healing is to either remember who you once were, or to discover on your own who you’ve become.

To lose love might hurts, because you’re losing a part of yourself, the same way it would hurt if a toe or a finger or some other small part of you were cut off. You will never be the same after its removal, because it will not grow back. You will, however, be forced to adapt to a new lifestyle without it.

Remember, it only truly hurts if you allow it to.

I used to think that the point of love, the point of any emotion, was to let it affect you however it might. 
You would know you were in love because you could not deny its power over you.
You would wake up in the morning and understand that what you're feeling is love. 
You would be overwhelmed with it. Flooded with it. Smothered with it. It would occupy your every waking thought. Breathe in love, breathe out happiness.

I thought love was something you would fight to the death for 
because once you found it, you could not live without it.

It would not betray you, dismay you, or enslave you.

I realize now that it does all of those things.
When you least expect it.

If we can control everything, then the aspect of chance is removed.
And life becomes that much more monotonous.

Love is not necessarily the reason you get up in the morning, its just something to come home to at the end of the day.
Not something you think about regularly,
just a shadow on the corner of your thoughts.
There for you to remember sometimes,
but to ignore most of the time.
It can make you happy -
but then again, you could make yourself happy. You have that control. You don’t need love.