I Love You, But You Probably Aren’t The One

You probably aren’t the one. I don’t want to hurt you or make you think that this was all a game to me. But the truth still stands: you probably aren’t the one.

Sometimes, people talk about how they’ve met their soulmate or true love or Prince Charming and how they can’t imagine living without that person. I’ve been in love a number of times and, yes, it has absolutely stung for a while after I’ve lost it. But love is kind of like a paper cut. It’s practically invisible but it stings so badly that you honestly consider just cutting off your finger to save yourself from any more excruciating, paper-cutty pain. Eventually, though, it heals and fades until all that’s left is a new layer of skin and a vague memory of how badly it hurt.

That’s kind of how love is, don’t you think?

I might tell you that I love you, and I probably do. I might snuggle into you as you kiss my forehead and I might try to explain to you how perfect a moment it is. And I mean every word of it, because the moment is perfect and you are perfect in the moment.

But what I don’t say is that I don’t believe in soul mates and I don’t believe that there is one person out there for each of us and I don’t believe that that’s how love works. I believe that there are dozens — probably even hundreds or thousands — of people out there that I could be perfectly content with and that you could be perfectly content with that are not you or me. I don’t say that I believe that love is a fickle thing and that no one can love the same person forever.

I don’t tell you that you’re probably not the one because there is no “one.” I don’t tell you because you’ll look at me with those sad eyes that tell me that you just want to save me from such a cynical existence and I don’t need saving.

I fall in and out of love constantly, giving a tiny piece of my heart to every person that reaches their hand toward it. And, sometimes, I collect tiny pieces in return so I can build my own mosaic heart, made up of tiny shards of all the other hearts that I encounter.

So, you probably aren’t the one, and I probably won’t ever find someone to give my whole heart to or someone I want to take a whole heart from.

But, in the end, I will have my full, mosaic heart, made up of all the glassy colors I’ve collected from all the other hearts I’ve touched and that doesn’t seem so bad after all.