What is love?

Is it a feeling?

Or is it a connection that gets sparked in our hearts when we meet someone?

Is it possible to love more than one person?

Or are you only supposed to love one person at a time?

These questions are questions that will never be able to be truly answered, but the question that everyone is asking is “is love real?”.

The answer is YES. Love is real.

Love is in everything we do. Love is what makes the world go around. When you have nothing, you have love.

Everyone is capable of love, they just have to find it in them to open their hearts to the possibility that someone else out there can accept them for everything that they are and everything they aspire to be. They have to be willing to admit to themselves and someone else their flaws and mistakes and allow someone to accept them. This concept is very scary for many people but a lot of those people are not at peace with their mistakes or themselves.

Throughout my life I’ve learned you have to love yourself before someone else can. If you can’t accept yourself for everything you are, then how could someone else? These days, people think that love doesn’t exist because every day people are getting their hearts broken. But it’s not that love doesn’t exist, its that we look for love in all the wrong places. We look for love in people who aren’t ready to be loved or to give love in return.

We feel as if giving our bodies to some guy or girl we just met will make them love us. But that’s one of the worst things you can do. Sex won’t get you love, and it sure as hell won’t make you feel any better about yourself when they leave or won’t return your call. I may sound like a mom, but the one who is willing to wait just might be the one for you. No one gets love right the first time around and no one knows who is the right one for them.

They say there’s only one soul mate for everyone, but I believe that’s a lie. I believe there is more than one person for everyone. I believe this because if there wasn't more than one person for us, we’d spend eternity searching through all the people in the world. See, that’s the funny thing about love. You have to have faith. Faith that the right one will come along. Faith that you will find love and a life long companion.

No one will be forever alone unless chosen to live that way. As the old saying goes, “you have to kiss a thousand toads before you find your prince”. Some may kiss less or more than others, but everyone has a prince or princess. It is important to remember that God has a plan for everyone. If you haven’t found the one yet, it’s for a reason. Maybe you have a lesson to learn that you don’t know about yet, or maybe there’s something you are supposed to do or accomplish before you can find love.

Whatever the reason may be, have faith. Have faith in yourself and in God that he will lead you to the right one. So stop wasting your time on a boy or girl who could care less about your feelings. Stop wasting time on the person who doesn’t respect you or appreciate you. Stop arguing with the person your with and trying to continually convince yourself that you can’t find anyone else or won’t find better, because you will. It’s important to remember that time and history with someone doesn’t matter if you’re miserable all the time.

I learned this lesson at a young age. I had many different boyfriends. I went through a lot of heart breaks but when I was seventeen, I met someone. He was someone out of my comfort zone of guys. He was kind and thoughtful and a gentleman. I knew he would never do anything to hurt me, considering he had fought for my attention for so long.

In the beginning of our relationship, things were a little rocky, but we had a lot of good times together. As time passed on, I fell more in love with him and became more sure that he would be the one. We ended up going to the same college and a year later, we moved in together. Before we knew it, two years had passed by. But we had changed with the time. We had grown as people from the life changes we had gone through. We changed.

We started arguing over little things more and fighting until 3am. We spent more time fighting than making love. We started seeking attention from others instead of each other. But even though these things were happening, we still thought in our minds that it was okay because we were meant to be together. We talked about marriage and kids and our future together. We had it all planned out., but we had no idea that those things would never happen.

In the last six months of our relationship, we grew to be people we didn’t even recognize. We grew to be violent towards one another when we argued. We grew to hate each other. We grew to resent each other because we both knew we weren’t meant to be and we were wasting each other’s time. We both knew it, we just couldn’t admit it to one another. We thought it was just natural, that all couples do this, but we were so wrong.

In our last days as a couple, I found out he had been cheating on me with someone I thought was a friend. I was heartbroken and didn’t know where to go from there. I thought my life was over. I was continually asking myself what was wrong with me and what I did to deserve this. I was scared. I was scared because I had planned my whole future with someone I thought was going to be in my life forever and then in a blink of an eye, it was gone.

What was I going to do now? How many more boyfriends and heartbreaks would I have to go through again until I found that one? I found comfort in a man for a couple of months who I thought was good for me, but really, he just made me crazy. He would ignore me for days for no reason at all and always had me wondering how he felt because he would never tell me. I knew he was no good, but I was too scared to let him go because I didn’t want to be alone again.

I kept making excuses for his actions. Once he finally left me, I was back in the same place I started: alone and afraid. Until a couple of weeks later when I met someone new. I wasn’t looking for anything serious, all I wanted was someone to talk to. I just wanted someone’s company. Someone to take my mind off of my broken heart. The more I got to know this new boy, the more I started to like him and the more time we spent together, the more I fell in love with him. But the truth is, I was afraid to get too close, too comfortable.

I was afraid to let him in and to fall in love again because I didn’t know when it would all be ripped away from me again. But he proved to me a little at a time that there was nothing to be afraid of and that I was safe. And now here I am, a year later, completely and utterly in love. I am happier than I’ve ever been. We never argue and we get along great. He is my best friend. I’ve found myself making plans for our future together and I hope with all my heart that it comes true.

Now that I look back, I see the reason for it all. I see the reason in all the heartbreak and misery. I see that God had a plan for me and that plan was the man I am in love with now. See, at the time it was hard to see the reasons why but now it’s all so clear to me. All the failed relationships had a life lesson to be learned. I believe I had to fall in love with someone else and go through all that heartbreak to really learn how to love someone.

I had to have that serious relationship to know how to have one with the person for me. I learned that people do change and sometimes it’s not always for the good, and that’s okay. Sometimes people drift apart and that’s okay too. I learned that it doesn’t matter about time and history, and that arguing and being miserable isn’t healthy and it’s not normal. If my ex had never cheated on me, I never would have found the love of my life, and I never would have learned these valuable lessons.

I now actually find myself grateful for him and that girl for showing me I had the strength to move on and be with someone else. Life and love are funny like that. It knocks you down a thousand times before you become the person you are supposed to be. It makes you a better you and each time you get knocked down, a little piece of you falls into place.

So let yourself be vulnerable.

Open your heart to someone and let them love you.

Don’t be afraid of heartbreak and being alone, because you’re never honestly alone.

Make mistakes and learn from them because one day you’ll look back like me and be thankful you did. You’ll understand the reasons why and you’ll start to wonder why you ever wasted your time in the first place.