It’s natural to want love, it’s natural to crave it. It’s natural to feel like you need it, like you might not be able to breathe without it, especially when you’re lonely, and that’s when we crave it the most.

And sometimes that profound sense of loneliness makes you think maybe love isn’t meant for you, that there’s a reason you’re lonely, and this is when love starts to feel hopeless. Because you’ve tried so hard to keep people, to make them stay. You’ve tried so hard to be exactly what they want you to be, but the problem is, that’s everything you’re not.

So you keep trying. Because you don’t want to be alone, because you don’t want to be the friend who constantly tags along as the odd-numbered wheel. You don’t want to be the one who watches other people walk down the sidewalk with their arms around each other, their hands intertwined. You don’t want to be the one walking beside them. You want someone of your own, someone who looks at you like you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to them, someone who wraps their arm around your waist and pulls you closer, someone who tells you how wonderful you are in a way that makes you actually believe it. You want someone who loves you the way you’ve seen everyone around you be loved, because it suddenly seems like everyone’s capable of finding it but you.

And this is when you think maybe you have to look harder, search farther and deeper. You give more chances. You become more open. And sadly all this seems to do is bring more heartache. Because when you’re so desperately searching for love, looking anywhere and everywhere to find it, you volunteer your heart to all of the people who don’t deserve it. They take from you what they can’t give back, and that leaves you feeling empty. You can’t expect to receive the same type of love you give, but love also shouldn’t make you feel depleted.

You’re better off not looking, because that thing you’re searching endlessly for, with that one special person you’re wishing, praying, to meet, even if you find it, even if you find them, you probably won’t know it’s love when you do. Because while love at first sight is relentlessly romantic, love isn’t always something you can recognize at first glance.

Sometimes love is there, and you doubt it, because you’re not sure if it’s real, and you really don’t feel like getting hurt. Because hurt is something that’s extremely hard for you to navigate, and happiness is on the other side of it, but you’re not sure if you’ll be able to make it there all over again. Because when you keep on looking for love, hurt is something you experience more than once. So maybe you’re better off not looking. Maybe you’ll find love the moment you stop. And you’ll probably doubt it when you do, but the fact that you weren’t intentionally searching for it, makes you feel like you have nothing to lose.

So you go for it, and strangely enough something starts to click. You start to realize what it is you really want, and it turns out it was different from everything you originally set out to find. Sometimes when you’re looking for love, you look for all the wrong things. Because love won’t always instantly reveal itself, sometimes it takes time. Sometimes it takes time for you to understand that it’s there, for you to accept that it’s there.

Sometimes the best kind of love, the real kind, sometimes it finds you.