We want to simply love. We want to fold it up and put it in a little box, one with labels and compartments that are easily understood and acted upon. We want to make sense of the pieces, remove all the confusion and difficulty and watch as it all falls into place.

And yet, we want to overcomplicate love. We want to see it as this big, complex thing we’ll spend our entire lives trying to figure out. We want to pass blame when it falls apart. We want to calculate, and analyze, and deconstruct all the ways it works, or doesn’t with certain people. We want to make it harder than it has to be.

But when it comes down to the truth about love—this complicated, simple, beautiful, messy thing—it’s not so much that we have to totally understand it, completely know what it is, or how it feels. It’s not so much that we must be able to fully explain all the parts of it before experiencing how it changes us.

It’s honestly, that we have to believe in it.

When we fall for people, in a sense, the love comes naturally. We don’t have to teach our lips to kiss, our hearts to beat, our hands to sweat, our minds to run in circles at the mention of their name. We don’t have to teach our bones to ache on the nights they’re not around, or tears to fall when we miss them, so deeply. Love is inherent within us, with the right people.

And yet, we know that the act of loving requires work, requires pursuit, requires a choice—to love that person, even on the days where you’re let down, or frustrated, or tired.

But there are so many aspects of love we have yet to grasp. We still fear for new relationships, carrying the baggage of our old ones with us. We still are nervous to let someone in, hesitant because there’s a chance they might not meet us halfway, or not be willing to share the deep parts of themselves in the same way we will.

We still don’t know how to love—how to be vulnerable in an age of temporary commitments, how to forgive, how to let go, how to know whether or not we should pursue someone, or the chase the feelings we have in our chest.

We make excuses. We hold back. We think that we must know, beyond a doubt, whether something is true love before we fall into it, for fear of getting hurt.

But maybe the truth about love is not so much that you need to know whether it’s for certain, but you have to willingly, fearlessly, unquestioningly believe in it.

Maybe instead of making excuses, or giving up, or holding back, or trying to control and shape it, you lean forward and trust that your connection with another person is real. Maybe instead of trying to determine whether it will be hard, or easy, or somewhere in-between, you simply take a step closer.

Half the battle of love is believing in it. Not knowing. Not analyzing. Not oversimplifying or over-complicating. Not attempting to have all the answers. But simply deciding to believe that it exists, it is real, and we each can experience it when we let down our guard and let people in.

It’s not so much about finding a ‘perfect person,’ or having this amazing connection. It’s not about looking back and wishing you could change parts of a past relationship. It’s not about being too afraid to trust. It’s about believing. Simply believing love does exist, and you can experience it.

Because when you truly believe in it, there’s nothing holding you back—no exes, no broken past, no failed connections, no confusion or desperation to understand what cannot ever truly be understood.

You just believe. You just trust. You just let go.
You just let someone fully, beautifully into your heart.
 

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