With Valentine’s Day, the topic of love and relationships comes up more than I would care for it to. All my friends are in relationships, already planning their swoon-worthy evenings full of romance and magic. Every hangout we have lately consists of talking about love and things related to that topic. Don’t get me wrong; I LOVE that the people I care for most are in happy, healthy relationships, but sometimes I can’t help but feel left behind by everyone else.Â
Growing up, I always dreamed of the kind of love you see in the movies: guy meets girl, sweeps her off her feet, and they live happily ever after. To me, love was grand gestures and proclamations of love for everyone to hear; a promise between two people to always care for each other. I was a true hopeless romantic in the making, and I felt it in my heart that the perfect person would appear one day and make all my wishes come true. Unfortunately, I didn’t experience the kind of middle school flings that all my other friends did. While I watched my peers pass notes to one another and secretly hold hands in the hallway, I simply watched from the sidelines. I convinced myself that it was fine, and that high school would bring me the kind of love I hoped for.Â
At 17, one of my best guy friends told me he liked me at the end of the school year, and I was immediately head-over-heels for him. The relationship started out sweet and innocent, everything I had hoped for in a first love. He bought me gifts, he took me out to eat, and he always paid; what more could I have possibly asked for? This newfound relationship felt like a testament to all my years of yearning, like some sort of proof that my type of love did exist and was meant to find its way to me.
It quickly went downhill, though, and the next 15 months of my life turned into a nightmare I’m still in therapy for in my sophomore year of college. I became the scapegoat for all his insecurities, and every day he punished me mentally and emotionally for hating himself. His love became conditional, only accessible to me when he deemed I was worthy enough. When he broke up with me for the nth time the night before my graduation, I was completely and utterly distraught. Not only was I experiencing my first real heartbreak, but I was also seeing everything I had believed in being proved totally wrong. My idea of love shifted from something beautiful and grounding to fragments of insecurity and bitterness. How could I have loved someone with everything I had just for them to turn it into nothing?  Â
Despite my world being turned upside down, I was forced to move forward and keep pushing. I began my first semester of college and decided that it would be best to just shut everyone out. Having no one in my life meant fewer chances of being hurt, and I was willing to do whatever to ensure I wouldn’t be caught off guard again. I turned down hangouts from potential lovers and friends alike, choosing to spend my newfound freedom mourning the hopeful girl I once was.Â
Eventually, I came to the decision that if I wanted to enjoy college, I was going to have to at least make a few friends. I eventually met my best friend, Lucy, through a student org we were both interested in. While I was a bit wary at first, we hit it off immediately and started doing just about everything together. Grocery store trips, late-night study sessions, parties in Wampus- every waking moment was spent together. Through this org, I was able to make many more friends who showed me that college was a new beginning, and for the first time in months, I was actually happy. I figured that even if I didn’t have the love I had always hoped for, this was a pretty good alternative.Â
Right before winter break this past semester, my friends questioned whether or not I would be having a party to celebrate my 20th birthday since Thanksgiving stole the spotlight this year. I remember telling them that I didn’t really think anyone would care enough to celebrate it, and they were all shocked! They immediately began to help me plan and prepare for the event, spending the night before cutting up countless strips of paper to make paper chains and hanging decorative stars all across my living room. 3 hours before the party began, Lucy and I made a trip to H-E-B to get snacks and drinks for the 9 guests I had invited. I was scrounging for money, and it went without saying that I didn’t have a huge budget to work with. Lucy, without saying anything, helped me find the perfect mix of items I needed that everyone would be happy with without breaking my bank account, and when we went to pay, she even took a few snacks and paid for them herself. She helped me with the final details right before everyone arrived, and when all of my guests showed up, I nearly burst into tears. When the time came to sing me “Happy Birthday”, it took everything in me not to cry in front of everyone. I felt so loved and cared for, and the biggest epiphany of my life washed over me immediately.Â
I had spent so much time looking for a soul-crushing love with someone else, the kind of love that makes you do anything for the person you care about, for years, and in that moment, I realized it had been with me all along. I had friends who were willing to stay up and help me decorate with no actual reward in the end, and who gave up a Saturday night to celebrate my birthday instead. They had held my hair back on nights that got a little too wild and stayed by my side when it seemed like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. It was real love when Lucy made me breakfast, knowing I’d probably skipped it before our hangout, and it was also love every time she said yes to seeing each other, providing me with an outlet for something I probably needed a distraction from. When I would call my high school friends crying in the middle of the night over my ex-boyfriend, when they would pay for my food knowing I didn’t have money to go out but couldn’t resist extra time with them- it was always real love. It had always been there, sometimes quiet and other times loud, in small gestures and even grander actions, but always unconditional. It was there every time I said I needed to catch up on work, and everyone would immediately offer to keep me company while studying, and it was also there on the endless nights spent together, with the backing track of our laughs intertwined together.Â
The love I had dreamed of never came from a boyfriend or romantic interest. Love was never meant to be difficult or something to be in constant competition for. It had always come to me through my closest friends, the people who loved me without expectation or reward in mind. True love was, and had always been, the friendships that guided me home at the end of the day.Â