On The Love We Deserve.

I wrote this on V-day 2 years ago and still stand by it

I didn't want to write about 'Galentine's day' or how great it is to be single or in a relationship right now. I didn't even want to write about self-love, a topic that frequents The Aram. What I really want to write about, as I type this romantically at 01:35 am on Valentine's Day, is something I question a lot. What we ask of when we think of love. 

Love these days feels like such a weighty topic. Perhaps, that's because we have all these ideas on how love should be while also trying to drag things that aren't love into love. Situations that should have expired already. 

There's also this recently hollow way of looking at love and women in particular. That we're bigger than love itself. That our feminism doesn't sit right with seeking romantic love. That we're so full with the rest of our lives that we don't have time for love. That may be true for some, but I think it's such a shame that we both expect love to come in a package exactly how we imagined (when did anything happen exactly as we imagined?) while anticipating the disappointments first.

I often circle back to the quote, "We accept the love we think we deserve". I know that may sound controversial as if Stephen Chbosky, when writing The Perks of Being A Wallflower, was implying that the love you have received so far is your fault or a reflection of your worth. Yet what I take from that sentence is the simple reminder that we are our foundations for how we want to be loved. And Valentine's Day is actually another opportunity to readdress what we deserve.