Fall in love with someone who is worthy of your time and attention.

Fall in love with someone who memorizes the way you laugh and tries in vain to make you replicate the sound as often as possible.

Spend your time with someone who still feels nervous in your presence. Watch him shake and sweat and try to focus on your words but instead focuses on your eyes and the way one of your teeth is chipped and how you throw your head back like a child when you laugh and how your hair twirls at the ends and how he would give anything to reach out and brush the stray strands from your face.

He will stumble over his words and meet your eyes and look away, but it’s good, it’s all so good and so new. You’ll gleam and shine with the newness of it all. Relish it.

Fall in love with someone who loves you on your worst days. He will drink you in like sustenance, even when you have transformed from a beam of sunlight into a stormy day. He’ll look at you like the earth has opened up and spewed forth a goddess. Let him.

Fall in love with him because he pisses you off. Fall in love with someone who matches your fire and tosses gasoline on the kindling just to get a rise out of you. Fall in love with him mid-argument when you’ve run out of curses and start calling him sweetheart again. Anger is good. When you stop getting annoyed with him, walk away. If you don’t, you’ll clue in years later and realize you weren’t annoyed because you were bored, and baby, you deserve better than boredom.

Relish his company because he notices the details. When he gifts you with vanilla perfume, spray it on his pillow and let him wake up imagining the way you taste. When he comments on your lipstick and how the colour reminds him of autumn and a brisk breeze and warm apple crisp, kiss him on the neck and leave a tangible mark of your love.

Fall in love with someone who continuously puts in effort. We are conditioned to settle in love, but love will only grow old if you let it. Fall in love with someone who is your best friend. When he brings you daisies in the dead of winter because he knows they’re your favourite, beam your thanks at him like the sun and watch your romance blossom into spring.

Understand that falling in love is never enough, no matter what romance novels will have you believe. Real love is hard – you will toil and scream and sweat and swear. No matter what happens, at the end of the day, you should never go to bed angry.

Remember baby, that above all, love is not always an epic poem. Sometimes the people we love will betray us and hurt us in ways that we previously thought were unfathomable. There are so many kinds of love in the world that we never experience the same love twice.

Perfect people do not exist – the happiest relationships come from those who mutually accept each other’s faults and weaknesses but go on loving anyway. Lust is easy. Love is hard. No one is perfect but the person who genuinely loves you will never stop trying to prove themselves worthy.

Above all, know this… Sometimes love is a quiet voice from the other side of the bed saying, “We’ll do better tomorrow.”

3AM Thoughts // AKA “I Wrote This Five Years Ago & Sometimes I Need To Read It As A Reminder.”