Dreaming...

They'll smile at me with one of those how-in-the-hell-did-I-ever-get-so-lucky kind of smiles and say without any sense of irony, "You're the kind of beautiful I want to wake up to every morning." Of course I won't be able to help but laugh because who in the hell thought that after all those nights alone they would find me? And all I'll be able to say to one of the greatest things anyone's ever said to me will be, "Ditto."

One word.

That'll be enough.

Can’t you understand,
I don’t want another hand?
Can’t you see it’s you?

Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregson

What I really meant:

"And when I asked you how you’d been I meant I missed you more than I’ve ever missed anything before."
- Iain Thomas

"Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can’t be logical about."

- Jeanette Winterson, The Passion 

To the man who'll ask me to wear a white dress,

 

Lean in to kiss me

and I’ll meet you halfway there,

reach and you’ll be held.

Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregson

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Thank you, F. Scott Fitzgerald, for understanding my heart.

Her heart sank into her shoes as she realized at last how much she wanted him. No matter what his past was, no matter what he had done. Which was not to say that she would ever let him know, but only that he moved her chemically more than anyone she had ever met, that all other men seemed pale beside him.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, A New Leaf

After all this time

It's funny, isn't it? He can talk to me every day for a month, day after day going out of his way to  initiate each exchange, but receiving one text from you for the first time in months can still trump every interaction I've ever had with him. As much as I've denied it, after all this time you still have my heart. Please be gentle with it.

I want to trust you,
and to believe in you again.
Please be gentle with me.

Always,
L.A.

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What I deserve

I know something is not quite right within a romantic venture if I don't need to write about him. If thinking of him doesn't make me want to sketch out possibilities and if being with him doesn't make me want to pour our sentence after sentence describing the way he laughs or smiles or just inspires me to be more, then I know. As much as I may not want to admit it to myself, that lack of inspiration is a red flag, a sign that I am settling, that I deserve better. That I deserve more.

Because I do deserve more.

I deserve butterflies and laughter and inside jokes. I deserve someone who not only calls me beautiful, but whose eyes make me feel more myself when they stop to take me in. I deserve someone who challenges me, who refuses to let me settle into a life that's less than I am capable of living. I deserve just-becuase-flowers and breakfast in bed and a touch that I can still feel after he's left for the day.

& I'll be damned if I settle for anything less when I'm just on the brink of twenty.

Always,
L.A.

What I'm waiting for:

As much as I find myself half-heartedly complaining about my single status, I'm not planning on changing it for just anyone. I'm holding out for a man who wants be a better man because of me and who inspires me to be a better woman. That's the kind of love worth twenty years of freedom.

That's the kind of love I deserve.

Always,
L.A.

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By God, I may be young, but I know how to love someone.
I may not know how to let someone love me, my imperfections and all,
but I pray some day soon I'll get the hang of it.

Always,
L.A.

Let them.

“Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.”
— Marc Hack  

Something that took the words right out of my mouth:

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Souls

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"The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. "

— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables 

"I wish it could just be simple, like a retro pop song, 'I want you to want me.' Boom. End of story. We all live happily ever after. But it is never really like that, is it?"
-John Tucker Must Die

“Someday you’ll find the right person, and you’ll learn to have a lot more confidence in yourself. That’s what I think. So don’t settle for anything less.”

—Haruki Murakami

"Your heart is free, have the courage to follow it."
- Braveheart

I know what they say...               "Love's messy."

Well maybe that's why I keep unconsciously sabotaging myself.

I've never been very good with messes.

Always,

L.A.

Faith.

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Note to self: Love bravely.