Love only comes once in a while. Knocks on your door, and throws you a smile. It takes every breath, leaves every scar, speaks to your soul, and sings to your heart. If I knew then what I know now…I’d fall in love.

“There’s something so special about first loves don’t you think?” she says going through my memory box.

“Yes, they come with a lot of firsts” – I say holding up a collection of snow globes I was once given.

She laughs. “And a lot of t-shirts? You really never wore one of these?” She asks.

“Nope” I say holding up an over sized t-shirt “Ugh… I was too cool to care”.

“What do you mean?” She looked at me puzzled.

“I was young and very immature. I spent the majority of that relationship fighting love. I didn’t know what I wanted and I certainly didn’t know what I needed. I thought love would tie me down. I thought being on my own meant independence and more happiness. I thought I had better fashion sense.”

“Well but aren’t all young loves wild and crazy that way?”

“Yes. But I was wrong. If I could go back I’d tell myself that all the games and all the time I spent being dramatic with ultimatums really didn’t get me anywhere. They only blocked me from being with a wonderful man. A man who all he wanted to do was love me.”

“But he wasn’t the one.”

“Maybe, but then again I never gave it a fair chance.”

“What you want me to call him up?”

“Noooo” I say laughing “I mean just think about it for a second. After him, I went through a series of bad dating. Only to fall deeply and madly in love again and get my heart broken. I’m no better off today then I was the day I removed him from my life. I just think how much trouble we would save ourselves if we didn’t fight love, if we just let it happen”

“Oh” she says thinking. “But then you wouldn’t have anything to write about. – she says jokingly, and I laugh.

The truth is that if it hadn’t been for our past we wouldn’t appreciate our future. And if it wasn’t for our present we wouldn’t hold regret of the past. Maybe you aren’t supposed to end up with the first person you fall in love with. Love isn’t really like the movies and things don’t just magically fit. But could you imagine a world where people didn’t fight love. How much heartache would you save yourself if you could only speak to the 18 year old version of yourself?

In regards to love what would you tell yourself? Would you make a list of who to date and who to stay away from? A cheat-sheet of relationship advice so you never had to face turmoil?

We waste so much time in playing games, in having pride, in trying to always be the one that comes out on top. And we lose and fail over and over as if it was a game of cards. Happiness is short lived and we discard people and move on thinking that every other time it will be different even though we play the game exactly the same. But did you really get ahead, or where you left behind searching for what was always there?

We use up a lot of chances that we can never get back. Because as much as we’d like to go back and have a stern conversation with ourselves, we can’t. We have to accept the cards we played. We have to live with our success along with our mistakes. We can only take hold of the present and try to map out a better future.