“Love is not something you go out and look for. Love finds you, ready or not, it’ll be the best thing to ever happen to you.” ~ Anonymous

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This is for the ones who wonder if they are destined to be alone.

It’s for those with soul searching eyes who have gone to sleep beneath a thick blanket of solitude one too many evenings to still believe in someday—those who have all but given up on finding love.

The thing is though, you don’t find love, but love finds you when you least expect it.

Perhaps you are sleepy-eyed from the misogyny of being sold and bought by lovers masquerading as owners who never seem to appreciate your value, those who never see that underneath your tarnished marks of honor you are truly priceless.

Yet, the thing with love, baby, is that we can’t ever force it.

We can’t love someone even if we try our damnedest to—just like when we do feel those tender pangs of love begin to grow, there isn’t anything in the world that can stop it from blooming.

We either love—or we don’t.

But we won’t find it by looking for it, because a love like this is one that sneaks in under the door—against our expectations—and in the shadow of moonlight, tastes like the sweet surrender of a kiss we’ve waited far too long for.

The kind of love you are seeking isn’t the one that can be found by answering questionnaires and correctly filling out an online profile, because what you are seeking is a love that sets you on fire.

A love that shows you why it never worked out with anyone else—a love with beautifully tattered and torn edges, which always seem to rest softly upon your soul and ignite your deepest desires.

It’s the kind of love that runs circles around you at times, but only in a way that makes you feel more alive than anything else ever has.

The love that you are wishing for amongst dandelions, under a violet sky, isn’t the kind of love you can plan for, and it certainly won’t make sense according to logical standards.

It won’t be rational—but it will be exceptional.

There isn’t any way to find a love that will be the best thing to ever happen to you and that’s why you’ve got to quit running around trying to find it.

It won’t be found in the guy two bar stools down who’s already slurring his words, nor is it in the man who asks to get naked with you but who doesn’t really know you. Likewise, you’re not going to find it in the woman who seems the easiest, but you also aren’t going to find it tucked between the well-known corners of your played-out neighborhood drama either.

This love that you’re seeking won’t find you until you’ve found yourself—and that’s no small task.

There is no way to know what kind of lover we want and need, until we realize what kind of person we are—and this isn’t done always with pure intentions and a blemish free history, but more likely in those bitter moments of regret, when it seems that we always choose the most difficult way possible.

But to learn is to grow, as long as we are ready to accept the lessons offered to us.

We can only accept the love that we think we deserve, yet as we change and evolve, so does what we believe we are worthy of—and the fact is every relationship you’ve had wasn’t meant to last forever, but only to help bring you to this moment.

There is no such thing as failure, and mistakes are just those marks that are more difficult to erase—yet, most likely, they are also those we needed to learn the most.

Because love can’t find us until we know what we are looking for, and most of us learn that by realizing everything that we don’t want.

Perhaps we all need to kiss our share of frogs to realize that they aren’t ever going to turn into the king we desire. Maybe sometimes we need to try our hardest to live the kind of love we think we should, before we let it fall and tumble to the ground—in the bitter chaos of impulses—-being too quick to please others, prior to finding the courage to live the kind of love that feels right for us.

The kind of love that has us smiling for no reason at all.

There’s a reason so many of us don’t fall into the kind of love that we are seeking until we are older—because we need to grow through our relationships in order to discover exactly what we need in someone.

Not want—but need.

Those who are still afraid to say they need someone are those who are still insecure with their own demons or weaknesses. Saying that we need someone doesn’t mean we are weak or insecure—it only means that we simply know two is better than one. Needing someone means that we have grown strong enough to understand that saying we need another is the most courageous thing we can do.

Because it’s okay to say you need someone—it doesn’t make you any less strong or independent.

Breathing in those words are sometimes the most difficult elixir to swallow—the truth of our hearts that sometimes feels easier to push away than it does to invite it in.

But letting love find you isn’t about taking it easy on yourself, but it’s about letting your truth bleed out for all to see—because if you haven’t gotten comfortable with your own truth, no one else will be either.

In reality, darlin, this love that you can almost taste—and whose hands you see in your dreams—does exist. But you’ve just got to open your eyes and realize that maybe it was there all along.

You just weren’t ready to see it—until now.

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Author: Kate Rose

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina

Photo: Flickr/LaToya Muse