PSA: Fall In Love & Break Your Heart

I used to fall in love with a new woman every single weekend! I’m a hopeless romantic at heart, a love-addict desperately seeking the tingly-euphoric rush of blissful lovey-dovey feels. I love love almost as much as I love sex — but that’s a whole different essay, babes.

“I met the love of my life on Saturday!” I would practically sing as I twirled into my office on a Monday morning.

“Who is she?” My straight coworkers would collectively ask, still fascinated by the wild and wonderful world of lesbian dating.

“I don’t know her name.” I would say coyly.

“You don’t know her name?” They would ask incredulous, still in perfect unison. I felt like we were trapped in a strange millennial musical!

“I saw her from across the room at a club. She was DJing. We locked eyes. I felt something and I know she did too.”

“Wow.” They would all respond, their souls radiating with palpable jealousy. Why can’t I have a magical lesbian love life? I could feel them wondering.

The truth was, I didn’t have a magical lesbian love life. I’m just the type of girl who tricks herself into falling in love….incessantly.

Later that night I put the word out there that I was curious about the sexy DJ. Within thirty-five minutes my friend Layla (a club promotor) reached out to me.

“She has a girlfriend and is in love, Zara. Stay away.” She revealed, via text message. I felt my heart drop into my toes. Had I dreamed up our connection? I spent the night feeling sorry for myself as I furiously journaled until 2AM.

The next day I woke up feeling thirty pounds lighter. Like I had been on a juice cleanse! Which I suppose I had been. See, the bitter sting of rejection pulls up a lifetime of neglected feelings that have been stewing inside of you and brings them right up to the surface. It’s like getting a facial with painful extractions. You might break out for a few days because the lifetime of bacteria that has been festering beneath all that makeup forever adhered to your face is now being…released.

All too often we don’t put ourselves out there and allow ourselves to fall for anyone because we’re so wildly afraid of being rejected. But here’s the beauty of rejection: It doesn’t kill you. But having regrets — not telling her how you really feel — not asking him out, all of that shit — does kill you. It kills your soul. And your soul is too fierce, too beautiful, too epic to die such a weak and cowardly death.

Keep your soul alive by throwing your heart on the line as much as possible.

Because all these little stings are helping you to feel the scary feels you’ve been too afraid to confront. I get it. The deep traumas are hard to cry over. You know that when you unlock that box a wild beast is going to come flying out of it and sometimes you’re just not in the place to tame a fucking lion.

So fall in love instead. Love will help you feel. And when you feel you heal.  

That’s all I have for this quick little weekend PSA. Fall in love, break your heart, get rejected, ask her out, make a giant asshat out of yourself, sleep with her on the first date, kiss him at the bar in front of everyone. Weep when your lover leaves you. Weep because it’s the end of an era, weep because you had mind-blowing sex, weep because you feel vulnerable, weep over all the shit you never wept over because you were too scared or had to be too strong at the time. All that sobbing will wash away the hurt you’ve been storing inside your body for all these years.

You’ll never regret sobbing over love. You will regret a boring as fuck life without risk. And at the end of the day, the only real, life-affirming risk is allowing yourself to fall.