30 Things Every Twenty-Something Learns About Love

1. It will feel like home sometimes.

2. Other times it will feel uncomfortable, painful, even wrong.

3. It will seem unattainable some days you will cry and dread and ask yourself if it’s playing hide&seek on you.

4. It will make you drink many drinks and smoke many cigarettes, and have many random dates and one night stands just to get the person you loved out of your system.

5. It will make you experiment with words, not just sex positions.

6. It will be dangerous.

7. It will feel far.

8. Sometimes it will be bigger than you and the earth will crumble, and you will feel that even 18 years later you could walk towards him across a room the same way you did yesterday.

9. It will chase you away, sometimes towards new people and stories, sometimes back to yourself. Don’t fight it, let it blow through you.

10. Some days it will feel like the weight of the world vanishes and you can hear your heart sing.

11. Some mornings, it will find you sleeping half naked in your make-up, on some boy’s mattress in a dim, overly heated, shoe box sized room, and you will think this is happiness.

12. At nights, you will eye it on the dance floor, sipping Bahama Mama’s and swinging your hips to The Beach Boys. It will take you by the hand and grab you by the heart.

13. It will feel addictive.

14. You will miss people you didn’t think you loved, and you will love people who won’t miss you back.

15. You will find in her guarded heart.

16. You will find it in that one Tinder date that you fall in love with and things don’t work out – but in the middle, my god, you tried.

17. You will find love in the long distance relationship that did not survive the test of time.

18. You will start liking yourself. You will try to love yourself.

19. Sometimes it will creep out of old closets and from under the bed and give you a slap in the face in the shape of a pep talk from a troubled ex.

20. It will hurt.

21. No doubt.

22. But you will begin to understand the dynamics of your life.

23. Love.

24. And identity.

25. You will like that.

26. It will be strange and elusive, like a butterfly, foamy and sweet other days, like the ginger bread crust dipped in milk.

27. It will send you places, teach you to burn bridges, and sometimes leave the world behind.

28. It will make you laugh.

29. It will be unforgiving sometimes.

30. But it will be worth wile.