And no one will ever break your heart again...

I stood in front of the mirror and looked at all sides of the dress. A perfect (color non-existing-other-than-in-weddings) bridesmaid dress. A chiffon, one shoulder piece that I wont regret in wearing, when on the corner of my eye I observed a soon-to-be-bride stepping up to the platform, where she proceeded to twirl, mesmerized, while her company ooed and awed.

I smiled at my mom and said “always a bridesmaid never a bride”. She looked at me puzzled partly because she doesn’t understand English and because if she did I’m pretty sure she’d give me the same look.

Till I was 15 I had this innocent notion of love. I seriously believed you'd meet someone, you'd fall in love, and everything would end in a happy ending. After one too many fairy tales you begin to believe that love flourishes out of thin air and background music. That you casually bump into someone at your favorite coffee shop. Your coffee spills, and you both kneel down to clean, apologizing, both look up at the same time as music begins to play in the background. You look intently into their eyes, as the score makes its climax, and you realize he/she is the one. Birds sing, the sun rises, the flower blooms, the story begins.

Quite frankly till that age I was biased. All I knew of love was my parent’s story and theirs is such a beautiful one… it set the bar pretty high. Needless to say after my first broken heart, the illusion of it all crashed, that foggy midst I’d been walking in cleared. And I realized love was a little bit more complicated than butterflies in your stomach. After a series of failures you can find yourself jaded. You feel like you’ve lost your ability to be loved. Quite frankly, sometimes you wonder if you’ll ever get it right. There are only so many times you can wind a ball and miss before you get taken out of the game.

Sometimes reality can get in the way of our faith. You’re hope can fail, boyfriends can cheat, people can disappoint. And it’s in these moments where you just want to roll your eyes, drop the act, and just be cynical. But then what??? After you accept the fact that life isn’t fair, do you just become bitter and let someone break you indefinitely?

“¿Que dices?” my mom interrupts my thoughts.
“Nada.” I smile back at my mom and blink back the tears.

I look once more at the bride and sigh deeply. So maybe love isn’t like the movies. Maybe first kisses aren’t accompanied by a full orchestra. Maybe you just hit and miss over and over till one day God has mercy on you and you finally get it right. They say it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. And maybe they have a point. Because love is what keeps the world from completely unraveling in front of us. It’s what makes life and every struggle worth enduring. And no matter how jaded a past relationship can make you feel you have to believe in something. We sometimes, against all odds, must defend the idea that love exist. That in a dessert a flower can bloom.

Love is the greatest risk you’ll ever take. But you’ll be stronger because of it. And if you love whole heartedly eventually life will surprise you, and you, its greatest skeptic, will once believe in love again. Because one day someone will come along and it’ll pay off… and no one will ever break your heart again.