I was once one of those people who tried to see rationally.
My life has been colored in black and white since the moment I was born. Pencil on paper, a mundane winter’s day, the canvas of childhood devoid of colors.
I was taken over by the relentless drive of my future. I barely spent a waking thought in the present, pressured by the incredible amount of stress I loaded on myself, even when I was a young girl.
Because what about my future? Where will I go to college? What will I do for a living to make money? I have to be able to support myself. I can’t ask for help because that will make me weak. I don’t like being weak. What about my personal life? Will I ever fall in love?
This was the question that always managed to stump me. Although my other thoughts were extremely worrying, I knew I would figure it out. I always did. Rationalism was reliable like a math problem with a perfectly correct answer. But love, that was different.
Humans are unreliable. I guess that simple fact was the missing variable in my question. You never know what someone can be thinking about you as you can’t read their minds. Thoughts can fluctuate thousands of times throughout a day, sometimes about the same subject. Feelings can change in a heartbeat through circumstances of chance or coincidence.
I couldn’t possibly know for certain if someone would continue to care about me, want to be around me, and love me, since there is no solution to the fickle, everlasting condition of love.
From there on, I convinced myself I was unlovable. I closed myself off to nearly everyone, thinking it was better for me to protect my fragile heart than take the terrifying risk of being hurt. I never strayed from this detrimental mindset, keeping to it like an oath I promised to myself.
At one point a few years ago, I came to the realization that I had to learn to trust myself to open up to my peers and confide in the values of teamwork and kindness. As I tentatively began to venture out of my comfort zone, I discovered a very sincere fact.
I’m sick of being rational.
I found that being alone is a much harder task than I once believed. I entrusted myself with the practice of independence, scarcely ever asking for assistance, convincing myself I could make sense of any problem I came across on my own. However, in doing this, I merely let myself down by believing that I could mentally live in solitude.
The truth is, we all need someone to rely on. Someone to talk to, someone to relate to, someone to love. Everyone yearns for the incomparable, swooping feeling of love and the incredible happiness it brings.
Maybe, we all need a little romanticization in life—a confirmation that we are not alone. A glance shared across the room, a joyous laugh between friends, a treasured hug when it’s most needed.
Maybe, as Charlotte Lucas says in Pride and Prejudice, “We are all fools in love.”
