Having your heart broken is one of the worst pains a human can endure. A non-physical emotion, yet its reaction causes a piercing fire throughout your whole body for weeks and months at a time. Anger, rage, and violence become inevitable and you often feel like you cannot help but choke on every breath of air you to take. Your mind consumes your wellbeing as you replay events; your thought process clouds everything you thought you knew; your life becomes dampened as it floods your eyes with images of everything you thought was real and apparent.   

Our generation is brought up on the notion that we’re meant to stumble upon our perfect soul mate; a soul mate that reflects your second half, your better half.  What our generation also believes is that the path to finding your perfect soul mate will be effortless and filled with serendipitous events that portray something out of a John Cusack movie. While we’re off constantly searching for our perfect soul mate, we neglect the truth of what love is and has always been.    

Love is hard. Love is tragic. Love is absolutely awful. Love is joy. Love is the sun hitting your back on an August day. Love is the wind in your hair on an interstate highway reaching speeds on 95 miles per hour. Love is a Rubik’s Cube that takes four years to solve with the help of eight people. But most of all love is everywhere and it plays a game of Hide-and-Go-Seek; it will find you no matter what crevice or ditch you place yourself in.    

We spend all of our adolescent years searching for the “perfect love story,” but that perfect love story doesn’t exist. Even our most prized love debacles of today prove that our version of perfect love never truly existed. For instance Candace Bushnell took women of all ages on a ransack journey through Manhattan as Carrie chased Big, Big chased Carrie, Carrie chased Big again, and then Big chased Carrie a few more times until they so happened to end up on the same bridge in Paris on a chilly Spring night. Watchers threw their Elle-Woods-post-Warner-tantrum and refused to forgive Carrie for taking Big back after he had cheated, gotten married to another woman, and then refused to accompany Carrie at the alter.   

There, another question arises. After several years (practically a decade for Carrie) of being hurt, how do you learn to forgive? How do you realize that love has no limits, no boundaries, and no set rules for success? In the wise words of Queen Bey, “Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me. Forgiveness is the final act of love.”   

Carrie and Big had a perfect ending, but while they were #OTR to their courthouse wedding they were malicious to each other and left a beautiful pair of Manolo’s in an uptown closet which approximated the size of Central Park. So, while we’re out searching for the perfect love, we neglect to realize that the most perfect love has faults of its own. It is unintentionally cruel. It is careless. It is ruthless and painful. But it is also one of a kind, ignites with spark, and always finds its way back to the coupling of soul mates that it baits. And with that, we must finally commit the final act of love: forgiveness.