This week, the Scranton chapter of Her Campus is devoting itself to focusing on one common theme: Valentine’s Day. In a much broader sense, we are tackling love. Or actually, attempting to tackle it. Striving to understand it. Desiring to even believe in it.
Personally, I have always always always been the biggest romantic I’ve ever known. I look for the guy who will offer me the things my younger self hopelessly watched being given to all the girls in romantic comedies. I look for the guy who will bring me flowers just because, grab any random gift for me because it made him think of me, and spend time planning dates that he wanted to be perfect for me. The funny thing is once I found that guy, once I had that guy in my life, I didn’t want him. He had done everything right. He had given me everything I asked for and everything I didn’t even know was possible to give. He was exactlythe guy I had built up in my head as perfect… Yet we weren’t perfect together.
Fast forward a few months and I met a guy who thought the things I dreamt of in a guy were the most ridiculous requests. He thought random flowers were pointless. He thought planning dates was a waste of time. The only things that reminded him of me were Instagram memes. He didn’t offer anything I had imagined my dream guy would… Yet I thought he was perfect for me. Unfortunately, his thoughts weren’t the same towards me.
So, after two relationships, where one provided me all the things I thought I wanted and one provided me the exact opposite of all the things I thought I wanted, I was left struggling to believe love existed in this world. I mean, how could it exist when it wasn’t the ideal I had always thought it to be?
However, last night in the midst of sipping wine and devouring homemade cookies while engulfed in yet another romantic comedy, I looked over at my best friends laughing and realized that was the love that existed in my life – that is the love I believe exists in this world. The love I am surrounded by, and almost suffocated (in the best sense of the word) by, from my friends and my family and myself. That is the love I need most to thrive and survive in this chaotic mess I call my life. That is the love I find myself focusing on and building upon in my life right now. That is the love we should all find and foster because it is by far the BEST kind of love that you can give and receive in this beautiful, beautiful world.