I’ve always dreamed of loving someone who would also love me back. I’ve often wondered how it’d feel to rise triumphant and without ado, if every fiber of my being could be eased by the sight of another. I often wonder if the fear within my heart would cease just by trusting someone’s words. I wonder how my thoughts will change; how will I see myself? Will I love myself more because someone else does too? Or will I simply smile, and forget every thought of darkness to plague my once broken heart? Or will it be, that rather than forget, I learn to forgive the words that spun in my mind like a whirlpool of unfaltering waves?

What is love when it is true? I dare to see it as a dream. It’s like a fantastical journey that never ends, with ups and downs that make loving someone more desirable. For in this venture there is everything a story needs. If it’s true, your heart will grow and your character will change. The danger is exposing your heart, and giving it the freedom to taste what it always yearned to savor. Morsels of kindness, crumbs of sweet care, splashes of passion and just a hint of jealousy— like a touch of spice to give a kick when needed. But it’s not just some delicious recipe to churn in an imaginary cauldron of feels; no, this climactic danger is about taking risks and daring to say what you feared might be rejected. You see, this true love comes from the mind but is overwhelmingly felt by the heart.

I suppose it must be pondered, if not what, then when love is true. For if I dared to dream my dreams, then when would reality come to prove it? And will the questions never end? I suppose they might, if only I knew the answers, rather than fear what is to come.

How can one fear a thing as ridiculously as it is to fear a thing like love? Well, don’t you fear a test before it’s graded? Or an application that hasn’t yet been accepted nor denied? Don’t we fear a game before we know who wins, or tremble at the thought of the first day of school, even when you’ve had first days for over thirteen years of your life? Aren’t humans often frightened at the uncertainty of what is to come? I don’t see love as any different— only that it is the greatest of these fears. To give your heart when it’s covered in cracks, scars, and the needle and thread of what you’re still sowing back together, can be the most dangerous and gut-wrenching fear to shake your being.

So how do you do it? Because it’s not putting yourself back together after breaking that halts you from moving forward; it’s finding a way to love once more but fearing more than death, that rejection is all you’ll get.

But isn’t that what love is? Overcoming fears to be heard, to be felt, to be seen. Believe me, if could bottle the hairs of a unicorn’s mane or capture a variation of colorful light from a rainbow and pour it into that cauldron of lovely traits, I’d have concocted the perfect recipe for unconditional love.

But this is life, and making it that easy would mean that we aren’t living it. If we didn’t take risks or shed old skin to get where we want to be, then I have no idea how we’d evolve or burgeon into the creative minds that lead generations to believe in themselves.

So find a way to override your fear. Make your life a creative tale, where you’re the protagonist taking risks to please your heart. Transform that fear into this thrilling sensation that rises from the glee of saying something you never thought you would. Be brave. Be resilient. Be you.

Even though it is of the greatest fears to love someone who will never love you back, at least you learned that you could love and see in someone, what they’re too blind to see in you.

That is the beautiful thing despite what our fears are so determined to dictate against: you love, not because you think you should, but because your heart believes it can. And I’d rather live with the hope of a wholesome heart than be numbed by the fright of losing it.

-Kiran Bains Sahota