Love would never be easy for “women like me.” Difficult women – that is. Or so I’ve been told. But I’ve met women who society claims are not difficult. There is no good synonym for these women, other than, “not difficult.” Perhaps, “accomodating?” Yes, accommodating is the right word. However, these women never seem quite so happy to me, for people who are supposedly easy to love. They always seem like they sacrifice too much of the self for something that isn’t love at all; just a substitute. I was taught to envy these women. But whenever I encounter them, I do not envy them. And I don’t think they envy me either. Life is difficult for the both of us.
My mother taught me to take care of myself from head to toe. That every detail of one’s appearance matters. I’m not so sure about this lesson. People don’t seem so attentive to me. But I still think of her lessons whenever I have a bad hair day, or think of myself as not looking particularly pretty, or realize I haven’t done anything with my nails for weeks. I wonder if falling and staying in love is harder because of these things. But then I remember my mother’s most important lesson about beauty – that it matters most what people cannot see; the heart and soul are what matters most. Trying to fall in love with heart and soul seem like quite the task, even on a good hair day.
There is a moment in every woman’s life when she wonders if someone will love her. If a woman has not experienced this – do not take anything she says seriously. Do not trust people who don’t believe in pain or suffering or heartache; who have never experienced these things in the misery of their own company. Trust people who know how to be alone, who have cried and comforted themselves in anguish, in loneliness. Trust people who still believe in the beauty and sacredness of love, even when they despair because of it. These people know how to survive. Trust them.
If you ever envy the love that other people have, remember that you don’t know anything about their life. Not really. You only know what people tell you and show you. Internalize this. Think of the things that you do not tell people about yourself. Do not read into stories that you are not a part of; do not paint pictures that you do not see. Be angry at yourself, your situation, your inability to say the right thing, and do the right thing, and be the right person – the kind of person that falls in love quickly and often. Be angry. You’ve earned it. Then each time, stop being angry and promise yourself that you will believe in love till your last breath. Don’t break that promise.
The people you want are bad for you. Or so you’ve been told, and so you tell yourself. It doesn’t help. It often feels like you’re stuck in the space between wanting people who don’t want you, and not wanting people who do. There’s a certain kind of madness in it. And people blame you, and you blame yourself. But you cannot force love from any side of the equation. Maybe that’s why love is so spectacular. It is a rare thing that happens when two people can want to be with each other in a particular place at a particular time, and want to keep wanting each other. It is bizarre and wonderful.
Tell yourself that you will not make the same mistakes other people make. Tell yourself that you are much too evolved for that. Those silly games that people play with each other, to get each other, to like each other. It’s all so pedestrian isn’t it? Why can’t people be in love the way we all want to be in love? Why must we all create so much work for ourselves? Trying to be the simple person inadvertently turns you into the difficult one. The one who is forward but scared; honest but cautious, and who wants to be brave with someone who is also brave. I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. All love is tragedy.
Dare yourself to fall in love, difficult woman. Do not listen to the voices in your head that tell you you’re not enough in one way or the other. Those voices are false; they tell you that you cannot do something that is in your human and spiritual nature. You can. Dare yourself to change in some ways, and not change in other ways, for the kind of love you believe you deserve. Drown the voices that tell you what kind of love is and isn’t meant for you; for women like you – difficult women, that is. You deserve good things and beautiful things and wonderful things. You deserve love difficult woman; you too, deserve love. 
