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*Dear elephant reader: if you’re single & looking for mindful dating or conscious love, try out our lovely partner, MeetMindful.

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I wasn’t cut out for easy love. I’m not good with befriending routine, safety or stagnation.

I need love to be a storm. I want to feel its rainfall flooding my veins. I’ll drown peacefully, sweetly submerged in the chaos of love.

I want wildfire that rages ravenously, burning through my bones.

I’ll never settle and I will not remain still.

I want it to cast me with the wind then to reach out tenderly as I struggle to seek my way home.

I’ll allow love to slowly and painfully peel away my old layers so I can shed the withered shell and unveil my naked skin.

I want to feel fear when I feel love. The kind of fear that petrifies and terrifies, but forces me to break down the walls I’ve built.

I know I run from love at times. I run from its dirt, its revelations and its beauty.

Love allows me to recklessly flee then awaits my safe return.

Love swims beside me as I dive to the bottom of its murky ocean like a pirate in search of forgotten treasure.

It shows me glittering stones, but also rusted hinges that debilitate and keep me from growing.

It frees me from the chains of loneliness I foolishly bind around my body.

I want to taste fragility and strength. To stand on the edge and only step back when I’m no longer afraid.

I’m vulnerable as I walk the bridge of love. It could crack underneath me then look away as I stumble and fall. It teaches me to trust. And not to cling on when it asks me to let me go.

Love doesn’t always stay forever.

Love shows me that if it collapses, I do not need to be its victim. I can survive the injuries inflicted to my ego. The ugly wounds made visible by vanity and pride will heal.

If love forsakes and abandons me, my blood will still flow.

Love isn’t a contract that has to be regulated and sworn by. It is free to sit or free to fly. I cannot rely or depend upon it to prevent madness from arising and driving me insane.

I will talk with the crazy self-doubt that accompanies rejection and I’ll rebuild what crumbles if love deconstructs.

I can let go of the frustration and anger that rises up when love lowers me down. Love shows us it all. I want to see and feel it all.

I can walk on and through it, over and under and not give in when the path before me is treacherous, brutally unearthing pivotal truths.

I won’t look away. I cannot take the clear, easy well-lit open road.

I will tear through the secure wrapping and destroy the seals that try to prevent love from seeping in.

Love holds the knife that carves through me and opens the dark hidden parts.

Love scares me. Love soothes me. Love examines my motives then tears at me, rips me down before eventually gluing me securely back together.

I wear heavy armor that protects me when standing in the battlefield that irrationally exists only in my mind.

Then I disarm when love reminds me it is not war.

The only war is the fight within that tries to avoid it.

Fear pulls me back. Love pushes me forward. I am at my most courageous when most wretchedly afraid.

I am most alive when reality hits hard and not when fantasy’s tricks and make-believe creep in. I must stay alert.

I cannot love the rain while opening a protective umbrella. I am confusing and deceiving myself as well as the rain.

Although love is mysterious and requires that I undo tight knots so that I unravel and cascade from the wrath of illusions, love teaches me the toughest lesson and one I will no longer refuse to learn.

To be loved throughout and to love another entirely, I must confront sly demons and rewire the cables that try to prevent me from knowing who I am. And, when I’ve witnessed it all, I must work to truly and completely love unconditionally my uniquely flawed, intricately complex, but worthy of love, self.

“All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.” ~ James Thurber.

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Relephant: 

27 Adventure Quotes to Ignite our Wild Hearts.

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Author: Alex Myles

Editor: Travis May

Photo: Flickr/BK