The aroma of chocolates in heart-shaped boxes and rose petals that have fallen from their stems flows through one’s nose, signifying that love is truly in the air.
But, what is love? Is it emotional? Is it physical? To those who have experienced it, the answers vary from heart to heart. But what about those who haven’t experienced that heart flutter or butterflies swarming in their stomach?
For those who haven’t, it makes one feel empty, leaving them with nothing but a craving, a hole that wants to be filled with the feeling of being the apple of someone’s eye, the center of someone’s universe.
A hole that sits in the middle of my own heart. One that I can’t fill with all the laughter and snacks in the world.
In high school, I thought I wasn’t seen as someone “loveable” to guys at my school because of how I presented myself with my appearance. But then again, high school kids were only looking to make out and get the right to say that they have a significant other. So it wasn’t as heavy on my mind as it was when I got to college.
In college, I saw people dating long-term and even some getting engaged a few months to a year after graduating. That’s when it started to bother me that I hadn’t experienced this feeling of adoration and love for someone else and someone vice versa for me.
That feeling from high school started to resurface, the feeling of invisibility. While this may be a cool power to have for some, this isn’t a comic book and I’m not a superhero.
Seeing couples walking across campus together, taking cute pictures on social media together, made the longing in my heart worse and worse. There were so many questions that swarmed my mind: Was I not attractive? Did I not have a personality that made someone attracted to me?
Whenever I tried to solve these questions, it was always the same answer of “you need to put yourself out there” or “maybe you just haven’t found the one yet,” but at the same time, how else could you put yourself out there on a college campus?
What if trial and error is the only way that I find “the one?”
I may not have all the answers now and I may have all the time to figure it out, but the longer I wait, the more my heart hungers for that feeling. That feeling of love…