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Love the Cliché

How I Found Love in All the Cliché Places

By Madi SmallPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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I always had a deep love for the idea of love, but I also wasn't sure what that was even supposed to look like. Was I supposed to have a guy that was going to help me check off all of my desires before I died like in A Walk to Remember? Was I supposed to desire to throw myself down a hill after my love as he yelled "As you wish!" like Buttercup did in Princess Bride? Maybe I was suppose to find true love at an early age and grow into it much like My Girl.

Seeing as how I was 26 years old, incredibly single as my brother likes to say, and no prospects in sight, I began ticking all of those possibilities off. Person after person would say the age old phrases of:

"It will happen when you least expect it!"

"Don't look for love. Let it find you."

"You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince."

So on and so forth. The list truly goes on further than one could possibly imagine. While I know these are all stated from a place of true care for the person its being said to, I also know that those are not helpful during the nights of extreme loneliness. They don't comfort you when you are surrounded by couples, wedding dresses, or endless pictures of newborns. They just don't.

However, I understand the validity in them (mostly).

I fell for a guy for two years, even though we never dated. We became best friends, and I had every hope that we would end up as more. When the time finally came for me to bear my soul to him, I was rejected, broken and it felt like my world had crashed down. I built my entire future on the idea of being with this guy.

I wanted nothing more than to be his wife, carry his children, and play house with him forever and always. Amen. Reality was that he didn't feel the same way and never would.

Everything I knew I needed in a guy, he had. Everything I wanted in a guy, he had. Everything I thought was perfect about a guy, he was! How could we not be together?

You know the phrase: Sometimes things fall apart so that other things can fall together? Well—that's exactly what happened. For a few months I dealt with the pain and the rejection that my friend brought (accidentally), and it wasn't until I finally let go of the dream of Friend and me and our future family that Cody stepped into the picture.

Cody was a country boy with a truck that is so loud it shakes the houses as he drives down the street. Cody was a divorced man with a 4 year old daughter. Cody loved spending his free time running (I only run to and from the kitchen during commercial breaks). He was nothing like Friend. He acted differently. He was not who I prayed for. I thought.

Turns out, God knew what I needed more than I ever did. Friend and I got along great and everyone assumed we'd be together, but the thing is, we never truly made sense. We could only sustain as friends, or crash and burn as lovers. I am not the type that desires a destructive relationship only for the passion of it.

Cody was everything I wasn't and then some. I am constantly surprised at how perfect he is for me. How much he cares and loves me in spite of my bursts of hanger, or my messy bed head, or my desire to make him watch chick flicks with me. He makes me truly believe all of those crazy and silly phrases.

I stopped looking, and there he was. I grew to love myself for me, and there he was. I desired so desperately to kiss my Friend, the frog, and then my prince came. Not in ways I expected, or ways I thought possible, but perfectly. That's how love happens. Unexpectedly and suddenly. Don't lose heart in the battle, because once those battles are over, you will have love, and war.

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