All around me, love blooms again. Amid the ashes—the charred remains of broken relationships—the seedling of the purest and most elusive emotion emerges. In recent years, I’ve listened to people who have lost love, watched others chase it desperately, and seen those unprepared for it feel nearly assaulted by this unwanted emotion.
Why is it that what we so desperately want remains elusive to some? Why does love seem to arrive when it’s least wanted or expected? Why does it leave those who crave it sad and despondent when it never arrives while leaving others uneasy when it does?
People say, "It will show up when you least expect it," or worse, "When you stop looking, it will arrive." These statements feel hollow, making the listener even more miserable. Why do some people find love repeatedly while others feel they’ve never known it?
Is love picky, deeming some unworthy and others too eager? Does it seek out a challenge, choosing the most closed-off, unaware people to strike? Or could it be that some are simply too desperate, their eagerness repelling the very thing they long for?
I don’t get it. I really don’t. Love tackles some to the ground, while others chase it like elusive fairies in a garden. And the saddest part is that so many of us ask: Why isn’t it me? Why don’t I have choices like others do? Why isn’t it me finding my unicorn, the one to have and to hold from this day forward?
That question—Why isn’t it me? —kills. It makes us sad, lonely, discouraged, and despondent. Someone I know asks it relentlessly. He tells me he’s tried so hard, for so long, that he’s on the edge of despair. He’s succeeded in every other aspect of life: firstborn son, captain of the high school football team, collegiate all-star baseball player, brilliant with a geophysical degree in petrochemicals, and now a petroleum engineer and oil & gas executive. He earns more than he could ever spend, buys four-thousand-dollar hunting vests, and owns enough luxury clothing to fill his closets twice over. And yet, it means nothing to him.
When I ask about his dating life, he looks away, tears in his eyes, overwhelmed by a life passing by without a wife or children to fill it. His days are spent doing what he wants, answering to no one. To the worn-out mother or the married man stuck in a routine, it sounds like paradise, a reality they can barely imagine. But he sits alone in his high-rise downtown, the king of his castle, walled in by empty rooms, listening to his own silence echoing back.
He has tried to hunt love down, wrestle it to the ground, but it always slips away and runs off, leaving him face down, fists pounding the dirt in frustration. It makes me wonder if there’s something inside us—some hidden flaw so repulsive that even love can’t bear to linger. I don’t know. But I see the scars it leaves, the bitter ache when I hold the bloody knuckles of those frustrated fists. I see it when he wipes away his tears, ashamed, calling his vulnerability a weakness because the hurt runs that deep. There’s a cavern in his soul, carved out by failed relationships and festering wounds.
Once a hopeful man, handsome and open, with love to share, looking out from his castle window across the green, fertile land, waiting for the carriage that would bring his twin soul—a beautiful partner to share his life and raise a family in the wake of their love.
The trees blossomed, the flowers bloomed, and he waited. The days grew long, the air warm, and he waited. The leaves turned golden, the air crisp, and he waited. The chill settled in, the land turned barren, and still, he waited. Season after season, year after year, until he couldn’t bear to wait any longer.
Hope died. His eagerness soured into bitterness. He closed the windows of his castle, no longer looking out at the dead gardens that once flourished in anticipation of love. Now, the castle is dark, the air freezing, and he roams the silent halls, haunted by his own question: Why isn’t it me?
Don’t we all ask, why isn’t it me? In the quiet of the night, as we lie down to sleep, memories creep in, playing a sad melody of our failed attempts at love. It’s a nightmarish lullaby that quiets our hopes, rocking us into sleep with its haunting vacancy. And in those last moments, as we drift off, our conscious minds murmur a final prayer: Maybe tomorrow, it will be.
