Catch Me I’m Falling

By Diana Garza

Love is a universal language.  No matter who you are, someone loves you. 

However love is not black and white. It’s red.  Where a simple connection binds a mother and daughter, it takes a fortress to build a relationship. To look at another human being and conjure dreams of children and marriage, or just aspiring to really experience life with them is raw.  Once you have a taste of love it’s easy to crave it until the end of time. But as much as people want love to be eternal, it can only be alive as long as you nurture it. Individuals fall out of love because the motivation to care for a relationship becomes a chore.  No one wants to experience this type of heartbreak, but it’s naturally incorporated into our reality. Whether it be a tragic event or just the run of everyday life, people change. For better or for worse, no one is the same person from a year or even a day ago. 

When you meet someone, they may be what’s missing in your life at that specific moment, but as you grow, your feelings do too.  Evolving into who you are meant to be comes with an enlightenment regarding what your life will look like. Sometimes your partner no longer fits into the life you have designed for yourself.   

It’s a struggle to keep a relationship afloat, and as time goes on letting it drown is simply healthier for both parties. Rather than exhausting your efforts to keep love above the water, allowing  it to fall saves you from a life of misery.

Within relationships we tend to hold on to moments, traits, or certain qualities in people.  The problem is, the person we love is bound to grow throughout their life. No matter how hard we try, we can’t pick and choose what parts we love about someone. As you see your person fade into a different version of the individual you were initially attracted to, it is natural for feelings to become ashes of a once great inferno. 

Your love was once gripped onto so tightly that it’s horrifying to imagine your life without it in your hand.  However, you must realize that your feelings have faded and no longer exist in order to continue on your journey of life.  The relationship that was once home to an immense genuine love has deteriorated into a mere concept in the back of your head.  It isn’t that the love wasn’t real or never existed, but that it has lost its original intensity. Day by day it will become clearer that the puzzle of your relationship is missing too many pieces. Falling out of love isn’t sudden or fake but it makes you vulnerable. 

In one moment or phase of your life, the love you felt was necessary to live.  But now the person who once held you up isn’t essential to your life anymore, simply becoming a background character.  Falling out of love is the recognition that the life you thought was being built was really just coming apart one little piece at a time. 

Love is complicated.  Love is fragile. Love is rare. 

Love, Love, Love, Lasts! 

By Sakshi Palav

As humans, we are constantly growing and changing for the better, sometimes even for the worse. We tend to grow and change the most after a heartbreak. Whether it be because we went through a breakup, or because a close family member or friend leaves, hurt pushes us to see better and become better. However, as time goes by, and we’ve pushed enough to where we don’t think about that person anymore, we believe that we’ve finally fallen out of love. Can you fall out of love though or were you even in love to begin with?

Drowning in gallons of ice cream and going to the gym until you feel better about yourself is how everyone often deals with heartbreak. You build this wall between you and the person that hurt you, so now you can focus on yourself and work on a happier you. Once you’ve reached that level of comfort with being alone, you often believe you’ve fallen out of love. To you, not thinking about that person anymore and even having a little hatred towards them, means you’ve finally moved on. Once you’ve helped yourself grow into a you that’s not the one that was susceptible to heartbreak, you no longer need that person. But if you think about it, do we actually fall out of love? Or have we just spent enough time on molding a new routine that no longer includes that person to where we can successfully say we do not need that person in our life anymore? Meaning, that that person is no longer a part of your daily routine and no longer necessary to your world. When you grow and spend time on yourself, you often find out things about yourself you didn’t initially know. So, in your new big and better lifestyle, that person responsible for opening your eyes toward growth by leaving, doesn’t necessarily fit into your new life. Thus, you’re no longer connected, no longer attached. However, if you stop to think, if you could be a future version of yourself, your mentality and thought process would be different because throughout life, you are exposed to different circumstances that shape you into a wise and grown you. But, if you went back into your life before the growth, you would still love that person. Even though they don’t fit into your life now, and even though you’re not attached anymore, love is love. If you fall out of love then it wasn’t true love to begin with. Because when you are truly in love, you love the idea of them, the idea that that person is someone you will always have on your side, the idea that they are attached to you and vice versa. It’s important to understand that feelings drive humans a lot of the times. True love keeps love alive and burning no matter how much you grow and how much you work towards not being attached to them. You will always love the idea of them because your past feelings will always remain a part of you. They were part of the reason you’ve grown into who you are now. 

Think about it. When people “fall out of love,” they say they lost feelings or that they didn’t want what you were offering. Heartbreak is usually caused by an action from that person you weren’t expecting. So you’re left hurt. Broken. They did something that made you realize they’re not the same as they were before. They’re not the same as when you fell in love with them. However, even with this heartbreak, the person they were when you fell in love and the feeling they gave you will always remain. You won’t ever fall out of love with someone you’re truly in love with. You will grow, prosper, and change, but you will still be in love with the idea of the person they once were.

Think about love like a favorite piece of clothing. Your favorite Taylor Swift tour t-shirt when you were eight years old is OBVIOUSLY not your favorite piece of clothing now. As your life goes on, you will find attraction to new types of mini skirts and crop tops, but you will always think about and remember the shirt you loved when you were little in a comforting, loving way. You move on not because you don’t like it or love it anymore, but because it doesn’t fit into your life the way it used to. However, it still holds immense value because at one time it was your everything. That shirt is a part of you that you will never let go. 

As we’ve all heard in childhood love stories, true love tests the age of time.