When you truly love someone, you have to learn the art of waiting. Love is not about rushing, demanding or forcing things to fall into place. Sometimes the person you love needs time to heal, to grow or to simply find their way back to themselves. And if your love is real, you'll give them that space without making them feel guilty for it. Waiting doesn't mean putting your life on hold, it means keeping faith in a bond that is strong enough to survive distance, silence and time. The love that is meant for you will never be lost, it will return when both hearts are ready.
"Forever is composed of Nows—
'Tis not a different time,
Except for infiniteness
And latitude of home."
— Emily Dickinson, "Forever is composed of Nows"
"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
— Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things"
Now is definitely not the time to be worrying about what other people think.
It’s the time to become intimately familiar with what you think, feel, believe, understand and know from your own direct experiences.
And to fall in love with yourself.
"To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again."
— Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart