I used to believe in love, in the true fairy tale sense of the word. I used to believe two people found one another and everything just clicked. I used to believe in the possibility of a happiness I’m no longer sure truly exists. This world seems full of far too many distractions and I feel far too full of sorrows and disappointments to ever return to the self that I once knew. I used to believe in love, and I want to again.

Yet here I am in a world where the majority of my options for meeting a girl are pretending I’m something I’m not on a dating app, going to a bar, or a club. None of those things suit me so I’m just wondering how my fairy tale ending will come about. Has it all only been fantasy, did I grow up learning to dream only to learn now that dreams are faulty and that reality disappoints. All of the optimism within me has died, I myself have died. I am a fragile shell of the man I once was clawing to discover who I am meant to be now. This is all because my heart was crushed just one to many times and now I feel love isn’t real.

I feel like I’m doomed to lead a life in which my ability to dream is crushed and grinded into dust until I just settle. I want more than anything to believe there is more for me, that the hope welling up in my heart is real. I haven’t felt hope in so long and yet here it is once more. Is love real? I ask myself this tonight because the hope in my heart hurts me rather than lifts me up. It hurts because it’s fleeting and after I finally go to sleep here at 5 am I will be waking up in a world where that hope has faded and the me that I could just barely see has faded as well.

Seeing all the dreams you had for the future fall like dominoes until the last thing they knock down is you, that’s where I am. I’m lying on the ground crushed by the weight of a tumbling pile of bricks. I don’t know what to do or how to feel. In truth this is the most emotion I’ve managed to muster in quite some time. I don’t write much anymore because nothing like this ever comes about because the part of me that could dream was the part of me that would write. I believed the world was better then what I saw but now I just see the bad and I’ve lost the hope.

So now I am writing at least one more time wondering if it will be the last. Will my emotions fully fade and a tear never fall down my cheek again. Will love ever find me once more, or have my walls come up too high? I don’t know what to ask, wonder, or do. How will I know if love exists unless I find it; and how do I have faith until I do?

My heart so often feels empty and yet tonight it feels momentarily full. I write with ease once more because I can feel the dreams returning and a hope that love can truly conquer all. I am a mess, I will never be the greatest catch in the world, but I am meant to love who I am. Flaws and all I am happy with the me that dreams foolishly and believes that love holds some of the greatest power in this world. This type of me may have great trouble finding the person who is meant for me, however at least then I won’t settle. So let me set aside the crushing defeats of the real world, let me turn myself around and first learn how to love myself.

I’m going on a journey of rediscovering myself. I will get better each day I will speak positively and dream big dreams. I will be crazy, foolish, and thank all those who helped me along the way. I choose to believe in love and end this written debate between me myself and I. My dreams are real and I am never to old nor too young, the start of my life once more lies on the other end of this night of sleep. So I will dream beautiful dreams tonight as I sleep and even when I wake up I will refuse to stop. A new me is being born much like an old me I once knew, a dreamer, and believer in love. Love that changes everything and one day I will know that love, but for now I will become the best me I can not for anyone else but because believing in love means loving myself, and that’s something I had forgotten. Now I can rest, and I can smile because for the first time in a very long time I am going to sleep with love on my mind and in my heart.