I Don’t Fear Being Alone. I Fear a Love That Never Gets to Exist

One of my friends is getting married. I'm very happy for him. He posted a story-just a picture, nothing dramatic-but it hit me like a wave I didn't see coming. And before I knew it, I was crying. Not out of jealousy, not even sadness really. It's just that something inside me overflows when I witness something tender, something pure. A human heart choosing another, openly, without hesitation. It's beautiful. That kind of purity undoes me. It always has. I've always been this way. I cry when movies get too soft. When a song says something l've never had the courage to say out loud. When strangers hold hands like they've finally found home. I cry when life, even for a moment, feels like poetry. And marriage, to me, has always been poetry. But not the kind most people recite. Everyone marries. Some for love, some for comfort, some simply because the world whispers it's time. Like a task on a checklist: school, college, job, marriage. A pattern quietly handed down. But l've never been able to see it that way. My heart isn't conditioned to follow maps I didn't draw. My heart refuses to be hurried or hushed. For me, marriage isn't a milestone. It's a moment of arrival. A sacred thing. A vow I've been rehearsing in silence my entire life. A soft kind of miracle. Like a parched traveler stumbling upon water after hours of walking through desert heat. Like a crying child collapsing into the lullaby of their mother's lap. Like a tired laborer returning home at dusk. Like a sailor spotting land after months lost to salt and storm. Like the first snow touching burnt ground. Like a letter arriving years late, but just in time to save something inside you. It's that kind of thing to me. Holy. Rare. A homecoming. Not a duty. Not a deed, not another thing you do just because it's time. Love, for me, is not just about finding someone. It's about returning to something you didn't know you were searching for your entire life. It's a homecoming. And what I'm most afraid of-what keeps me up some nights-is not that l'll never get married. I can live with myself. I've grown fond of the silence, the solitude, the gentle rituals of being alone. What breaks me is the thought that I might have to settle. That I might end up with someone who doesn't make my soul tremble. That I'll spend a life explaining my passion instead of being seen through it. I'm afraid of living a life where the love inside me stays hidden. Where the kid in me, the one who believed in grand gestures and quiet mornings and kisses that taste like forever, never gets to come out and play. Where the love l've carried like wildfire has to be folded into something small, digestible, acceptable. Just because I couldn't find someone who felt like fire too. I've played the romantic comedy in my head a thousand times. The stolen glances. The laughter. The arguments that end with one of us running through rain. The quiet, sacred mundane of growing old with someone who still reaches for my hand in the dark. Maybe it's the movies I've watched. The books I've read. The poetry I consume like water. Maybe all that ruined me. Maybe it made the ordinary feel unbearable. But I can't unsee the kind of love I believe in. And that's the ache-l don't fear being alone. I fear a love that never gets to exist. I fear the version of me that will have to dim just to stay. I fear having to carry this passion all my life like a secret that no one ever wanted to hear. I fear waking up one day beside someone I like... but not someone I would write poems about. People like me, who live at the edges of feeling, we don't always survive the wait. We dream too much. We feel too loudly. We want love to be sacred, not scheduled. And the world doesn't always offer that. The world offers compromise. Quiet companionships. Surface peace. And I want more. I need more. So maybe I will marry. Or maybe I won't. But I know this much-there will be no in-between for me. No halfway house of affection. I'm either burning or I'm not lit at all. And if I ever do find it—if I ever look into someone's eyes and feel the chaos settle—I will know. I will know I've come home.