Go For It

I was scrolling through the pictures on my computer, trying to clear out the cobwebs on my starter disk and make room for new ones. Old texts from boys I’d loved more than myself, pictures of couples dripping in the love of the moments captured there, couples who were no longer couples. They were separated, singular, sometimes burrowed in hatred or daring the words, “I just didn’t like him anymore.” People break up, people drift apart, those in love and those not, and as I wandered through the love of two people who no longer speak I could not help but think that we were all pretending it wasn’t a tragedy. It feels like a tragedy. Like waking up and realizing that the person you loved most chose silence over you when they told you they loved you, for always, forever.

The loss of another human from your heart is tragic, whether you expected it or not, there is a breathless moment where you realize you just want to look into their eyes and feel safe again, but you can’t. They aren’t yours anymore, and maybe, you think, they never were. It’s tragic, it’s heartbreaking. It’s a mess.

You know you’ll be ok, you know it because underneath the puddle you feel that you’re still bones and muscle that can pull itself up after this. You also know you’ll be ok because that’s what everyone keeps telling you. “There will be someone else,” they croon. “He just wasn’t right.” “You deserve someone better.” “She didn’t know what she had.”

Yeah ok, you groan as they croon the old familiar lullabies that haunt every breakup— but you wanted that person, you had that person. “Let me miss them a little longer,” you whisper. “Let me mourn.”

A lot of people close to me have waded through break ups recently, found themselves deep in a muck they didn’t see coming. Relationships are hard they excuse, he was too clingy they exonerate. He says we’re on a break, he cheated on me, she broke my heart, she said things to me and I can’t date someone who thinks of me like that. It’s me, not you. We need to find ourselves part from each other.

“You shouldn’t, you just shouldn’t really date in high school,” cries the population.

“College is just a really hard time to be in a relationship,” excuses the masses.

It seems that there is a cliché for every time in your life you might possibly be trying to date up to the time when you’re already supposed to have found someone, be married, have a dog and three kids. Or a kid and three dogs. Maybe some cats.

PSA: you don’t just magically end up married one day unless you’re drunk and in Vegas. Dating is usually necessary. (Arranged marriages and unique instances excused.)

Is there ever a good time to put your heart out there and fall in love with someone who has the potential to leave you? You can be fifty and get your heart broken. I’m watching the marriage of someone I adore splinter and break because someone kept changing and growing, and the other person didn’t. You will always be changing and growing, there will always be places of your heart that are new, you will always be discovering pieces of yourself. Forever. Like until you breathe your last breath forever. There are always new experiences, places, books, movies, people, food, deaths, moments that will change you. You cannot escape the inevitability that you will be someone else in five years; in my experience, time and life will change you if you’re living right. And it’s a good thing, it’s a worthy thing— you ought to be so malleable that God can whisper into the wind and you will change for Him just through the most miniscule hint. You do a lot of growing in your high school and college, it’s true. I know relationships that made it through those times and have now formed into marriages, long lasting, permanent. I know others that didn’t.

Life will always be messy; dating will always be messy and hard.

From where I sit there doesn’t seem to be a right or wrong time to date, there’s no schedule that’s perfect for everyone to follow. The fact is you can meet someone at the absolute perfect time and they can still break your heart. So date, fall in love— when you’re sixteen, or twenty, or forty-nine. Take the risk of investing in someone, for two dates or for two years. I have never seen someone who chose to love and was not changed by it. Heartbreak is tragic, it’s true. But if that person is worth it to you, then go for it. Make the memories that will make you smile someday when the aching is over, find people you’ll miss when they’re gone but adore while they’re there. Everyone has something to teach you, and if that’s through dating or friendship it’s worth it. Always. Loving each other if only for a season, regardless of whether you hold hands or hold coffee cups across the table from just a friend is worth it. For a moment, you might regret it, you might wish you never met them, you might cry for a year— I did, I’ve been there, but if you look at it with a little bit of grace for yourself and the other person you’ll see the beauty, I promise.

I think what the big point here is: you shouldn’t feel like you shouldn’t pursue someone who breathes magic and makes you feel whole because of a certain time in your life. That’s just a scapegoat. If it’s real and you try hard enough and God wants it as much as you do it’ll last. Whether you met when you were five or seventeen or twenty-six. Anything can happen. Good and bad, anything can happen and I think it’s better to have made rich memories tinted with gold than to have never stepped outside the lines.

I think you should go for it, I think if one day you’ll look back and regret not chasing them the way you chase your dog when it escapes your leash, just because the timing was off you should go for it.

Now, I’m not saying date everyone. Have time to yourself and grow and be single. This is all coming from the girl who has loved her share of boys, but also relishes in going to the movie theatre alone or sitting in coffee shops reading all day. Don’t become the person you’re dating or lose yourself every time you find someone, if you can’t figure yourself out then take a second to. Or five years. Or twenty. Don’t date someone to fill a void or to find a savior in a human being. You can’t use people the way we use chocolate when we’re really sad; no one is going to fix you, and you can’t fix anyone. If Jesus stops being the last person you talk to at night and the first person you wake up thinking about in the morning then maybe (not maybe, definitely) you need to step back from whomever is filling that space.

For that person, who is searching for themselves in other people:

“There’s so much more to life than finding someone who will want you or being sad over someone who doesn’t. There’s a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself without hoping someone will fall in love with you along the way, and it doesn’t need to be painful or empty. You need to fill yourself up with love. Not anyone else. Become a whole being on your own. Go on adventures, fall asleep in the woods with friends, wander around the city at night, sit in a coffee shop on your own, write on bathroom stalls, leave notes in library books, dress up yourself, give to others, smile a lot. Do all things with love, but don’t romanticize life like you can’t survive without it. Live for yourself and be happy on your own. It isn’t any less beautiful, I promise.” -Unknown