Love is horrible in the way it works. You can love someone and give yourself to them entirely without them knowing or feeling the same in return. There is no guarantee that things will work out and that you will live happily ever after. I wish there were, because maybe I would be less broken today if love came with more warnings or a higher rate of success.

I wish someone had told me that loving someone was harder and scarier than books make it seem. I wish someone had told me that just because you love someone doesn’t mean they’ll love you in return or told me that professing love is incredibly hard.

I wish that someone had warned me that sometimes love hurts more than it’s worth.

I loved someone and never had the strength to tell them that they were a glimmer of hope to me or that hearing their laugh for the first time made me the happiest I’ve ever been.

I always thought that I would be some heroine who would fall in love with a man who scooped me off of my feet. We would do spontaneous things together and love infinitely. Yet there I was, scared to tell him how much he meant to me because I felt like the risk of losing him was scarier than the thought of him never knowing how I truly felt.

I wanted to tell him that I dreamt of what his blue eyes looked like up close as our lips brushed or what it felt like to sleep in his arms and wake up to his smile.

My excuse was that I loved him too much to lose. I would’ve rather had him by my side as my friend than to know it was like to lose him as a lover because I knew that my heart wouldn’t take his departure with ease and grace, but with madness and long cries.

I regret it now because I will never know what it feels like to be held by him in the way I had wished and hoped to be held. I cheated myself out of the possibility of being loved by him. I let the fear of love keep me from loving. I let the idea of no guarantees in love keep me from ever trying.

I wanted him, I still want him, but my time and opportunity are over, and I’ve only hurt myself. I will never know what it feels like to be loved by him, only what it feels like to allow love to scare me in such a way.