Let's Pretend This Will Work

by Maddie Dawson

“Well, I just think that when that first love comes along, it brings with it a huge thunderclap of feeling—something so amazing that we get overwhelmed with it. And that it’s tempting to think that it’s the only love there ever could be in the world. But then it ends. Most of the time it ends. And then, a long time later, we look back and see that that whole experience of love was just a little kiddie pool we were paddling around in. And that actually a really huge ocean awaits us.”

I think that when you see bitter people out in the world, people who’ve been married for forty years and they tell you that love isn’t really real, that it never works out, those are the people who settled for the kiddie pool, and it dried up, and they never knew what was really out there for them. Saddest thing in the world.”