Everybody wants love, but I wonder if everybody is truly ready to be loved, it sounds easy, but love, is well… love. Love isn’t complicated, but love also isn’t simple, so I decided to come up with my own made up term, complicated simplicity. The great thing about making things up is that you set all the rules, you can decide what is and what isn’t, what was and what will be. Love is the same way, love is whatever you make it, it's not what you saw growing up, its not what you see while walking down the street, and it most definitely isn't what you see on TV or social media. Love is special, and what makes it special is that it’s a creation, a living breathing thing, it's never finished, and every time you look at it, think about it, taste it, touch it, hold it, you admire it for the unfinished masterpiece that it is.

I am not as master or a guru of love, I am a work in progress, as a matter of fact, I am in the midst of trying to understand why in my past I was so afraid to fall in love. It's at times an overwhelming feeling, to be loved by someone, the first people to ever show us love are usually our parents, guardians or whatever title you want to give the beautiful souls that looked after you in your youth. The first person to truly be my shinning example of what unconditional love is, was, and will always be is my mother.

So I can say with the confidence of a titan that I know what love feels like, but I still don’t know love like I should. It took me a long time to come to terms with that, I was ashamed to admit it, because I’m secretly a hopeless romantic. I hopelessly wanted to have someone else to love, for the longest time I was aloof to this fact or maybe I just didn't want to admit it, but I’m grateful that I know now. I so desperately wanted to love another because I wanted to show others what that feels and looks like, I wanted to do this so badly, because I received so much “fake love” during my adolescence, I was bullied, I was different, and I knew it. Beyond any of those things, the most damaging result of all of this, was that it made me afraid to love myself, I felt I didn't deserve that kind of love. We all deserve to be loved, but it starts with loving ourselves.

Loving yourself can be hard, maybe now more than ever, we have so many expectations thrust upon us and so many readily available examples of all the things we are not. There are far too many messages out there that leave us with feelings of wanting, these feeling of incompleteness. Its gotten to the point that we truly believe that if we have this, and do that, and go there, then finally we will be perfect. I’m here to plead to you to not think that way, love, “perfection”, it is all subjective.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. – Antione De Saint-Exupery

So if this message is unclear, then let me be plain, love is the most powerful force in existence. Love is a gift that can be given to oneself as well as given to others. Love has no magical blueprint or map, or guide. Love is complicated simplicity, and it’s the most precious things there is to find in the world. Love yourself, and I mean truly love yourself, not because you want it, but because you deserve it.

If you’re reading this right now and have already found love for yourself, or the love of your life, then I congratulate you. Please pass this message along to someone who is still on their journey. As I said before I'm no guru, and I don’t believe I know love like I should, but I'll be damned if I don’t find out and try my best to help others along the way.