Love is such an important and complicated little four-lettered word. I thoroughly believe that there are a lot of different kinds of love in this world. I love potatoes, but certainly not in the same way that I love my mom and my dad. I also love in my romantic relationships differently than I do family or friends and I love each person in all of those different relationships in different ways. It is so easy for most people to love. It may be more difficult for someone to fall in love or to let themselves be loved in returned. And the more I think about love and being loved, the more I wonder why everyone is so obsessed with love, both with finding love and falling in love.

How can we not be obsessed with it when they sing songs about it, write stories about it, and make movies about it? It seems like everyone is just searching and searching and searching for that storybook romance. To fall in love, to ride off into the sunset with their prince or princess, and to live happily ever after.

But does happily ever after HAVE to include someone riding next to you on that horse? Or in modern society, someone riding shotgun in that nice, new car you eventually want to be able to afford (come on, we all know that serious wealth is high on our list for when we graduate college). It just bothers me sometimes the lengths that people will go to love and be loved in return, to fall in love and to search for that "forever" person. I think that we are all being fooled by the songs, the stories and movies into thinking that we need this crazy, perfect, puzzle-piece love that in reality just doesn't really exist. Because nothing is perfect, and everyone has their own stories. The chances that your story will involve a white horse and a sunset are few and far between. I would rather have a cold beer and a pizza to myself as I binge watch Netflix alone if it meant I was happy.

I think there is a lot to be said for people who choose to be the hero of their own stories. You don't need someone to "save" you. I think you need to save yourself first. Love yourself first. Complete yourself, first. You need to know who you are as an individual and as just you on your own, first, before you can allow yourself to love and to be loved in return, and especially before you can even think about sharing your whole life with someone else. I don't like to think of relationships where people talk about their significant other as completing them as healthy...you need to be complete on your own.

I would rather end up with someone who complements me rather than completes me, someone who makes me the best me that I can possibly be. Someone who extends me, rather than fills in my missing holes. Fill in your own holes, or let those holes stay there if you'd like. You are you and that is impossibly rare. Love yourself first, be happy by yourself first, and then everything else will eventually fall into place as it was meant to be.