I don’t know how you like your coffee on cold mornings.

I don’t know on clear nights which rooftop you climb, what haunts your thoughts at night or what makes you want to stand up and fight.

But I do know you—and I know your heart.

You are the woman who zips her own dress up for work every morning. The woman who cooks dinner for one. The woman who runs around double checking locks before going to bed every night. The woman curled up under sheets, in the corner of a bed meant for two.

I know you because we share the same joys and the same pain.

We all arrived here through different roads, different highways and different dirt paths. Some of us are bruised. Some of us are spotless. How we got here doesn’t matter—only how we’re tied together.

We are the women who spend our sweatpants-wearing Sunday afternoons alone. The women who treat ourselves to fancy Valentine’s Day dinners. The women who buy ourselves jewelry after making mistakes.

We are the women who have great sex with sexy men but wake up every morning with no cute text messages or funny notes. 

We are the women who’ve decided to bravely put love on the back burner. We know we’ll one day be partners of wonderful wild men. We might never get married but we know there’ll come a time when we’ll look into someone’s eyes and see a man who loves us.

We never for a second doubt that we deserve all this but we know that now is not that time, and we accept it with grace and patience. And we enjoy the ride. 

Couples in black and white romantic movies make us smile without wincing. We sing along to love songs on radios knowing that one day, one of them will be sung for us. We go to sleep every night happy no one’s taken our minds hostage and that no one is cheating on our hearts. We aren’t waiting. We aren’t still, or frozen with hope. We are in a constant state of motion, dedicating everyday to ourselves and the professional goals we ache for.

We are the women with huge hearts and empty beds, occasionally fulfilled by good men who are interested in our bodies but not in our lives. Who wants to know what we are doing but not HOW we are doing. 

Solitude can get deafening sometimes, but self-sufficiency is a trait even warriors have trouble mastering. And we do it every day. 

Carry your pride flag with you and know you’ll never be alone.

Beside you stands an army of women marching to the same heartbeat in bedrooms that are oceans and countries away, carrying the same promises to themselves throughout their days.

Never allow anyone to tell you what you should have, or who you should need.

And never let anyone tell you who you are allowed to fall in love with, allowed to sexually crave or allowed to miss.