The Boys You'll Love at Twenty-One
For my 21st birthday, my grandma and I thought it would be fun to do a psychic reading. Now, I don't know how much I buy into those things but I love the coincidences; some sort of sign that people see you, people see what you are going through. That is comforting.
My psychic reading sounded almost like a horrible horror film script. She told me I had the potential to never find love and that this was a terrible year for me to be in a relationship.
I've said it before, and I will say it again. I rather be the girl who falls in love 900 times in her lifetime than just once. So I set out with an unassuming heart...
The Musician
He is going to tell you that he is a rolling-stone, and you have got to believe him. You will end up breaking his heart as much as he will break yours. The random weeks that you spend together while he is in town and up in the mountains, will not string together as a love story, but that is okay. You won’t regret a second day spent together.
He is going to teach you how to say the most sincere apology and mean it.
When he sings that song about you, to hundreds of strangers at a lousy bar, smile. Because once the gig is up, it will sound more beautiful than the way that he says, “I forgive you.”
The Professional Soccer Player
You will meet him at a bar and that will be the first indication that you shouldn’t even consider giving your heart to him. You will think that because your first date is on the one year anniversary of being single that it is meant to be. That is the problem with girls like us, we think mundane things are something more significant than they really are. We are constantly looking for that reassurance of, “yes put your heart back out there.” You are going to fall so hard, flat on your face that you aren’t even going to realize that you have fallen so hard. He will ask his friends if you are the most beautiful girl that they have ever seen and for the first time in your life you will believe it. When he invites you to have Thanksgiving with his family and convinces you that you will fit perfectly into the next family portrait, it is okay to be hesitant. You always had the issue of loving the family more than them, so it is okay that you need to take time. And if he can’t understand that. He doesn’t understand you.
When he leaves, you will understand the way that they leave tells you everything that you never got to know about them.
It will hurt.
You will realize that this immense breakage in your heart is a sign that you do in fact, still know how to love.
The Olympian
Taylor Swift wrote “Bad Blood,” about Katy for a reason. Very quickly are you going to realize who you want to be. You will also realize the way in which you try to build your character and reputation doesn’t mean that people see you in the same light. It’s going to take too many late night phone calls to mom and grandma to understand this.
When you meet him for the first time you will realize that the same guards and walls casts your heart’s shadow on your sleeve. The “blind date,” will be initiated by a friend who just wants “two of her good friends, with good hearts, to find love,” and you will go into it being unassuming. He will too.
One weekend will be spent up in the mountains, where a week’s worth of Jimmy Fallon is recorded for you. He will laugh at the way you eat two hamburgers at two in the morning when you can’t sleep. As you both lie on the floor he will convince you that you will name your daughter Eloise and you will both being speaking in English accents thinking about how proper the name of your family would be if you had one together.
You will be busy. He will be busy. And you two just get that.
Sometimes that is all that matters in a relationship of any kind. As long as the two people who have established the relationship understands the ins and the outs, maybe the canyon is only meant to hold those two people. He will profusely apologize for the lack of understanding the people in your life lash out with, and you will want to make things work so desperately for him, because you know he has been here before.
He will buy a house. You will pick out the granite counter tops. And you two will realize you are young twenty somethings.
Before you know it, this “I want you two to find love,” affair will turn into this beautiful friendship. Maybe that is where all great love stories need to start, as friends.
The English Teacher
Then there is going to be that one guy you have had a distant crush on since the beginning of university. You’ll talk about how Hemingway was a misogynist and how Fitzgerald might be the perfect lover; he will even thank you for allowing him to read your stuff. You will be lying in bed together at 1AM and beg him to make cupcakes with you – of course he will say yes, because that is the type of person he is. Then you’ll spend your free time writing about how he deserves flowers and balloons. How he deserves all of the grandest aspects of love in the world.
He will be gone quicker than you can blink. You will realize that you cannot save people; people don’t need to be saved. More importantly, you will finally understand that you do not have to be broken in order for someone to give you love in return. Don’t ever apologize for being full.
And on the same note, don’t ever apologize for the parts of you that are in the shadows either. In order to get him to trust you, you will have brought up pieces of your life that you have already resolved. Leave them there. That is not who you are any more. Again, you do not need to be broken in order for someone to love you.
Once you’re done crying over it, you will realize that some people just don’t have good intentions. This world is full of selfish people, and you sweet girl are not selfish. If we are being honest, this probably won’t be the last time you try and be there for a guy like this. It will make you better. Some days you will be convinced that lines of poetry run in between his fingers and on the days where you don’t, instead of hating him for using you, give yourself a bit of grace. You chose to fill someone up with love and sunshine – and trying to leave people better than when we found them is all we can do sometimes.
The One from Two Years Ago
This is going to come freight train fast in the form of Pinto Gorgio and terrible guesses during trivia. You’ll dance in his kitchen together and come up with secret handshakes. There will be an overwhelming sense of giddiness that plagues you and makes you say over and over in your head, "this. This is why it is okay to be single – because you get fast paced nights that make you fall in love. Some nights are meant to be extraordinary."
A few weeks later it will be a different song and a different dance. The song will be the sound of sprinklers at midnight that you run through together and the dance will have you rolling around in the mud, becoming intoxicated by laughter that you won’t even mind that your new white dress is not permanently ruined.
The sober conversations will be about your families and friends. And by the time that the first drink is gone, a gush of promises will be made.
He will leave. So will you.
Sporadically you’ll reach out to one another and make just a few more commitments with each other, maybe as a plea to make sure you see each other at least once more before the summer is over. But you won’t care or be anxious to see how it all unfolds because sometimes you get fast paced nights that make you fall in love. With yourself. With him. With life. With the idea that there is an abundance of love out there in this universe and sometimes we just have to commit to each other simple things like, “let’s be wildly crazy about each other while we can, and if it burns out, it burns out. And if it doesn’t … well that is wild in itself.
