Four letters. So much meaning. The three most beautiful, most terrifying, and most fascinating words in existence- I love you.
What's the obsession with love? Why do we feel such a need for love and acceptance? I can't answer that for everyone. Love has never been and never will be suitably generalized. "To each his own," right?
Love. I sometimes think that I've never been in love, never been loved, and that it's hopeless for me; that love will never happen, will never come in all its glory with bells chiming and birds singing and a love song playing somewhere in the distance. Generally I feel this way after watching a particularly sappy movie about love. They're all the same- woman finds man in unexpected way, woman falls in love, man is stupid, woman convinces herself she is over man, man comes back twice as charming and appears vulnerably in love, woman forgives man and they kiss. Please. Spare me the sap. It's a classic romance novel. It's money. If life was portrayed realistically in these films, no one would watch them. Who wants to pay $12 to watch two people fall out of love? No one. It's too depressing. And yet.. we face trials like this every day. Love isn't alone in causing people pain.
But it's the people we love who cause us the most pain. If we didn't love them, it wouldn't hurt so much when they leave.
Tears. Joy and sorrow have a fine line between them. People cry with happiness, and people cry with pure, unadultered pain. Each situation we're faced with every single day can have so many outcomes. We learn early on that some choices will always be wrong. But some choices are borderline, are on the fence.
Delusions. Why do we fall for people we know are wrong for us?
Temptation. We want what we want when we want it.
Impatience. Selfishness. Torturous desire. Longing. Sorrow. Pain. Hope.
Hope?
Hope. Strength. Compassion. Acceptance. Friends. Family. Love.
Which brings me back to my original thoughts. Love.
Have I ever been loved? Yes. Undoubtedly. I am loved by so many people in life.
My friends, for one, have been there for me through every crush, every heartbreak, every soppy love story, every fall, bump, and bruise, every complaint. They have sat through my tales of woe and my songs of rejoice. They've patiently waded through every dark detail of my life, waiting for a redemption, waiting for me to realize that they've been right all along, and once again I've buried myself in that grave that I had been digging from the very beginning.
My family has been through the roughest times and back with me. I owe my life to my family. It's been hard, of course, to live with the pain of knowing the past will take forever to overcome, and trying to just get through the day is a big enough goal. Pushing ourselves to scale walls and climb mountains (figuratively, of course!) hasn't been easy. Some days I think it would be better for them if I hadn't been born. My family has been through hell because of me. I'll be the first to admit it. They have made sacrifices that no other person could make for me. And that's only the surface of it all.
My schools have been, in their own way (and forgive the pun), educational. And while the schools themselves don't really fall into the "love" category, there are a few people who, especially these past two years, have gotten me through. With their care and understanding, I've made it through so many trials and heartaches. They've heard it all- my past, my present, and my fears for the future- and yet.. they still show care and concern that far surpasses what I could have even imagined.
Have I ever been loved? It would be selfish of me to say that I have not been.
Do I love? Yes. I love everyone, everything, all the time. Deep down in that black hole I call a heart, I'm a romantic. I am! I romanticize everything from love at first sight to how a story will end. People can never be evil. That's what gets me hurt, but I do it anyway. I put myself out there time after time after time, knowing I'll be hurt, but doing it anyway because I don't know how else to live. I've bared my soul more times than I can count, and still... it never feels like I've tried enough. I feel like I've given up.
Discouragement. We were never meant to feel like this. A long time ago, someone had his heart broken. And we're forevermore cursed to feel the same longing for something more pure. And to avoid that heartbreak, we settle for less. We either convince ourselves that nothing is good enough for us, or we convince ourselves that we're not good enough for anything.
Remption. We're beautiful. Think about it- we walk, we talk, we think. We can make choices. We can change our minds. We can change the world. We are contradictions. We control everything and yet nothing. Life goes on with or without us. We're not indisposable to anyone but ourselves. And someday, sometime, somewhere, it's going to hit each and every one of us that life may not be what we make it, but we make what life is to us.
Decisions. Will I ever find love? That depends on how I define it. Love has already found me- through my friends, my family, and my supports. Romantic love? I already romanticize about everything. Maybe it's time to stop thinking of romance as that person who comes and sweeps us off our feet. Maybe true romance can be found in the beauty around us. Because even a breath of fresh air that can keep us alive for one more second is more beautiful than anything in the world. Raindrops are like a thousand kisses pouring down on us from the heavens. Roses smell so sweet so that we stop to smell them and enjoy the beauty of a splash of color in a world that's blurred at the edges and fading to gray.
Love. It's everything and it's nothing. It's beautiful and it's ugly. And yet.. through it all, through every heartbreak, every stroke of bad luck, every tear shed, let it be said that we never gave up loving.
