If you were to ask me if I could have someone love me in less than 24 hours, I would probably say yes. I understand how that could make me sound arrogant, cocky, or just overly confident. Those are definitely not my intentions. That question would not exactly stump me, but if you were to ask me if I could fall in love within 24 hours, suddenly I’d have all these follow up responses like, “it depends on..” or, “well they should be like..” 

When I answered, I couldn’t help but feel like a piece of shit. How hung up on myself am I to think this way? I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the young and naive side of me that would’ve answered yes to that immediately. When I was younger, I carried notebooks around just full of love poems. Somewhere along the line, I think that I started to look at love like some sort of responsibility. At some point, I started to figure out the person who I loved was going to be responsible for helping me start a family. She was going to be responsible for helping me raise this family. I’d have to get my family to like her and her to like my family. I’d have to choose someone who understood that I am a work in progress, but I’m always trying to make progress and would expect no less from her too. That’s all tough work and a tremendous amount of responsibility. I always appreciated a little bit of tough work, but I can’t help but be upset that I would not be open to falling in love within 24 hours so easily. I’ve loved a few times and I’ll continue to love, besides love is the easiest mess that could ever be made. 

With that being mentioned, my new answer to the question, “could you fall in love within 24 hours” is now a yes. Life’s short and living without love is a heck of a lot harder to living with it.