Contradictions

I want to backpack through Europe alone, to get lost in strange cities where no one knows my name, to make decisions on a whim without consulting anyone—

But I also want someone to call when I see the sunset over Prague, someone who’d understand why I’m crying at the beauty of it all.

I want to be the woman who moves across the country for a dream job, who signs her own lease and hangs her own pictures exactly where she wants them—

But I also want someone to help me carry the heavy furniture, to argue about where the couch should go, to make the space feel like home instead of just mine.

I want to stay up all night reading books that change me, to have thoughts so big they can’t fit in conversations, to grow into someone I haven’t met yet—

But I also want someone to share the revelation on page 237, someone who gets excited about my midnight epiphanies instead of telling me to go to sleep.

I am terrified of losing myself in someone else’s orbit, of becoming half a person who can’t remember what she wanted before she wanted him—

But I am equally terrified of missing out on the kind of love that doesn’t diminish you but doubles everything beautiful about being alive.

I want to be ready for love when it finds me, but I’m not sure if that means having all my pieces perfectly arranged

or learning to trust that the right person won’t ask me to be smaller than I am, won’t dim my light but help it burn brighter.

Maybe readiness isn’t about having all the answers but about knowing that I can hold both truths at once:

I am complete alone, and I would love to share that completeness with someone who is complete without me too.