Let me begin by saying, whether you are actively searching for a summer love, or have recently been disappointed by him/her, it’s time to embrace the last month of summer and do whatever the hell you want.
Nicholas Sparks brilliantly ingrained in young women’s minds an unrealistic expectation of the perfect “summer love.” Unworthy boy/girl meets worthy boy/girl, parents forbid, but they fight for their love anyway and end up having the best summer/life ever…
I wish love was that straightforward, and maybe it is when we find someone willing to go to the end of the earth for us – defy friends’ opinions or parental guidance – and take on a world betting on our demise. Typically though, expectations, timing, and well, life, tend to get in the way of such a fairytale.
I’ve been through copious trials in the departments of love and life and can confirm that nothing is static; I think we all know this. But when it comes to love, this is especially true. Love is a rollercoaster; it’s a never ending ride and things are risky and uncertain. Risk is necessary for change and change is necessary for growth. Out of fear, many of us conclude change as a sign that the one we’re riding with isn’t right – they aren’t worth the ups and downs – when in reality, love wanes, it ebbs and flows. That’s the magical and detrimental quality of love: it’s transient. I’ve come to accept that we have to choose to love, to fight, to work with one another because those initial butterflies and bliss fade with time; if your partner isn’t willing to do the same, it’s time to leave.
In the context of searching for love, know love finds us when we least expect it and when it knocks on our door, we should enjoy it, allow it into our hearts. Usually, those are the loves worth fighting for that eventually change a person, but we can’t hunt it down or back it into a corner.
It’s hard to explain this because the paradox of love is that we naturally don’t want to give up on something or someone we can’t go a day without thinking about – something our mothers and every romance film has instilled in us. Our impulse is to over exert ourselves to something/someone important to us, but our mentality should be directed inwards concentrating on what is best for our emotional and mental well-being.
Our friends and family tell us one thing, and here I am being a friend, but we disregard logic and do the stupid thing anyways. We’re all guilty. Sometimes it’s truly heroic and other times it’s desperate and pathetic. So, where do we find the happy medium?
No one hit me for being as candid as possible, but once we get a life of our own and stop terrorizing love, talking sh*t to it, centering our lives around others, or complaining we can’t find it, everything becomes surprisingly simple.
Where is the virtue of being in a relationship if we fall apart the moment we’re on our own or someone decides to leave us?
There’s no need to bully a relationship or if we’re single, constantly wish we had someone to lie under the summer sun with.
The cards always seem to fall where they may, allow them to do so. Life has the habit of never, I repeat never, going as we plan. Once we acknowledge and accept this we can be free to wholly take on life and all its uncertainties. Motivation, drive, and independence are inspiring and admirable qualities of a personality and they impel us to act the same. A relationship worth anything should consist of two individuals promising to help the other become the most authentic version of themselves. In the past, I ignored how essential it was to create our own lives before granting others a place in it. I thought it was simply a principle of the unattached, but being in both positions – single and taken – it couldn’t be truer.
We all have (or are struggling through this), and I understand it’s an incredibly difficult aspect of life and love to handle and nurture. It’s never easy to move on, rebuild ourselves, rewrite our future, but we don’t get days back. Cry it out, and then try again tomorrow.
I don’t know what each of your personal predicaments are, but recognize that everyone deals with things differently and on their own timeline. We’re not bad people for the ways we explored what were beautiful and raw feelings; we’re not bad people for making mistakes because we all do – that’s how we know we tried for something. We’re not bad people for loving or hating or being disappointed by unmet expectations; everything we’re feeling and doing is completely validated. College is a freak show and a time when we become more self-aware. We get to endure all life has to offer – the joy and the pain – in order to figure out what makes us feel bad about ourselves so we don’t repeat it. This is how and when we are left with personal preferences and standards.
I don’t want to belittle anyone or discredit any actions, but there will come a moment of clarity and everything will start to make sense and hurt a little less. We learn from pain and that is how we grow; growth is inevitable so make sure you grow in a positive direction, not that of fear and insecurities. We may need to get on the rollercoaster by ourselves every now and then if we want to confront any of these fears we are suppressing within us – we’ll find that everything isn’t as bad or as frightening as it seems.
If we push for love, whether in seeking it or overly trying to fix something that needs to be left alone, more often than not, it doesn’t end well. I don’t think any of us are mature enough to deal with other people’s emotions right now let alone our own, but we should still be perpetually striving to improve ourselves and engage in activities that make us happy – we won’t regret it. For any of you thinking “I don’t have any hobbies, nothing makes me happy, blah blah”, I hear you. I didn’t have hobbies to save my life but I found some. I write, read, work out (pretend), sleep, eat, go out, explore downtown, go on adventures with friends, let my phone die, and it has been the most liberating experience yet. Yes, I still think a lot and replay the last few months; I have dreams that make me not want to face reality but that is our overnight therapy – embrace it and know things are about to get a lot better. Let’s not fill our hearts with hate, sadness, regret, resentment, or disappointment because things could be a lot worse. We need to take what life has given us and keep on keeping on. Any summer love should be with us, as an individual, first and foremost. I sound incredibly cliché but sometimes clichés are that for a reason. They’re tried and true. Good luck my friends!
And don’t forget: expect nothing, but be open to everything because – to quote Henry Rollins, “someone out there is calling you an angel.”