Fall in love with the wrong one. Maybe on accident. Maybe on purpose. Maybe without knowing whether this person is right for you. Maybe with a glimpse of truth in the back of your mind, and simply not caring at all.

Maybe because you weren’t thinking. Maybe because you had no fear. Maybe because you decided to take a step in faith. Or maybe because, for the first time, you abandoned all the restrictions and rules this word has put on you and decided to fall for real.

Whatever your reason, I hope you don’t regret it one bit. I hope you learn that it’s okay to fall for the wrong person, good even. In fact, I hope you do fall in love with the wrong one a time or two before finding someone who’s right.

I hope you let go and fall freely into love.

I hope you stop analyzing the future before it even begins, stop wondering and overthinking and trying to figure out whether a person fits in the little, perfect container you’ve boxed them in. I hope you stop feeling like you have to understand relationships completely before stepping into one. I hope you stop thinking you have to be a flawless, whole, self-loving person before you let someone in.

I hope you stop telling yourself that you are unworthy of love, or the opposite, that the world is unworthy of you. I hope you stop trying to manipulate love into something you can control. I hope you stop putting so many damn expectations on yourself and the people around you, holding the entire world to a standard none of you will ever reach.

I hope you stop searching for ‘the one’ and simply fall in love because the person standing in front of you feels right at the time, because you’re happy, because you feel something, because life is about embracing what you don’t know and letting your heart be the guide sometimes.

Because you’ll never find real love if you don’t try loving. If you don’t let people in. If you don’t love a few wrong people along the road, to learn and grow and bend and break and rebuild and discover what’s right for you.

Because you never will know unless you try.

Fall in love with the wrong one. With the person who seems right, but doesn’t end up matching the rhythm of your heart. With the one who makes mistakes. With the one who breaks your heart because even in your shattered state, you gained and learned and let someone in and that’s beautiful.

Don’t give your heart freely to someone who has the wrong intentions, to someone who doesn’t value you or care for you in the way you should be cared for. Don’t just reach out your hand to people who aren’t ready, who are fighting demons too big for either of you to face, who are unable to care for you because they’re stuck on someone else or too afraid to fully let you in.

You must always remember that love is imperfect, but that doesn’t mean settling for less. That doesn’t mean giving your affection away in desperation, in loneliness, in foolishness. Guard your heart. But not so much that you lose out on the ‘maybes’ on the possibility of love.

If there’s someone standing in front of you who is imperfect and messy and real, someone whom you care wildly for but you’re terrified it might not work out, someone who you know your heart has mad feelings, someone who seems genuine in intentions and love for you—fall.

They may not be the right one. They may let you down. They may leave you broken in the end, if and when that end comes. But what else is our purpose in this earth than to love? To hope? To trust? To have human connections with one another?

This could be beautiful, or it could crash and burn. But would you rather hold back and spend the remainder of your days wondering what could have been?

Or would you rather give it a chance, believe in the best, and let love into your heart?

Maybe they turn out terribly wrong. But is there really a ‘wrong’ person? Maybe they won’t become your forever. Maybe they’ll treat you like dirt. Maybe they’ll stomp on your heart and leave you in the dust. But in that relationship, you will learn your strength, your capacity for forgiveness, your hope for the future. In that relationship, you will learn what you deserve. You will learn who you were. You will learn what you need and that it’s not with him or her.

You will learn to ready yourself for the right one in loving the wrong one.

You will learn what kind of relationship is good and beautiful and a blessing in falling for someone who ends up being the opposite of those things. You will learn who you are and will become. And you will learn that life is all about risk and chance and trust.

So don’t regret anyone you love or let in. You are learning, you are experiencing, and in every failed relationship, you are one step closer to the ‘right’ one.
 

Marisa Donnelly is a poet and author of the book, Somewhere on a Highway, available here.