Love is all-pervasive. I have an entire playlist on my phone of songs that don’t revolve around love as the central motif, and sadly, it’s woefully small. I’ve been told again and again that true love is, and should be, a priority in my life. I’ve been conditioned to accept and believe that I’m supposed to have love, but I’m not good enough for it yet. Which is why, I have to constantly change, constantly alter myself, all in hopes of having someone say those magical words to me. I’ve never had a man confess his undying love for me. Never had the romantic gesture performed for me, that left me swooning. As a young teenaged female with a healthy emotional and physical drive, this puzzled me for the longest time. I fall in love. I’ve fallen in love. And I’ve done it with everything I have in me. But why hasn’t anyone fallen in love with me yet? It took me a whole lot of time to realize why. And it was simple, laughably so. No one has fallen in love with me because I’m not the girl you fall in love with. I’m possibly the woman you respect. The woman you admire. The woman you’d like to come home to. The woman who forces you to question perspectives you’ve been living with for years. The woman who rattles your preconceived notions of what YOU like. The woman you look at and wonder ‘how? How does she do that?’ The woman you look to for strength and support. The woman who makes you realize how large the world is, and can be. The woman you’d turn to when you need advice. The woman who makes a man out of you. But I’m not the girl you fall in love with. I’m not the girl you want to spend hours with, just staring at each other. The girl you try so hard to get a smile out of. The girl whose hands you want wrapped up in yours. The girl who’s so beautiful, so delicate, that she makes you want to fight the world for her. I’m not the girl you can protect from herself, because I’m not fragile enough to break at every step. I’m hardened, and I have battle scars that possibly mirror yours. I’m not ashamed of the marks, and blemishes, and bruises on my body and mind. They’re mine, and they tell my story. I won’t walk meekly, always a step behind you. I’ll walk with you. Push you, just as much as I push myself. This makes me difficult to love, because you can’t wrap my love around yourself. No. You’ll have to bend, too, and that will chafe at you. Eventually, you might leave, just because you found a girl who makes you happy, instead of a woman who made you think. I’m not the girl you fall in love with. I’m the woman you learn to love. And I’m okay with it, solely because I know that when someone says ‘I love you. I’m in love with you’ to me, he or she will know exactly what those words entail. Those words won’t be spoken through the early morning haze. They’ll ring true, beautifully true, in the harsh sunlight too. It won’t be words said in the throes of infatuation, but as an assurance of an investment. An investment of time, of love, of a possible future. It’ll be something reciprocated, and nurtured. It’ll be love worth fighting for.
Harnidh Kaur, 'When you're not the girl people fall in love with' ; Thought Catalog
