Is This Love?

   We crave love. We seek it out. We thirst for it. We write poems to express it. We write songs to sing it's praises. We watch movies about it,  and see ourselves in the characters. We profess it to one another other, while at the same time, hoping it's reciprocated. But if we seemingly go to the ends of the earth for what we call love, why do we run from it once we have it? Why don't we cherish it? Hold it? Mold it? Nurture it and grow with it? I think we don't treat love like we should because as much as we don't like to admit it, we don't fully understand it. Its a word that's bandied about without abandon, but what is it, really? You feel that burst of adrenaline and stomach flutters when you touch their hand or just glance at them from across the room, and think, "holy shit, if this isn't love, nothing is". That feeling is as addictive as any drug, and once we experience it for the first time, we start to crave it, or worse, think that a relationship is dead without it. The problem is that a lot of the fluttery feeling you get is a physical reaction to anxiety and the physical reaction goes away as you adjust. So the longer you're in the relationship, the more comfortable you become around that person, and that rush disappears. And if you're anything like me at all, you'll mistake that for "falling out of love." The difference between that rush and actual love is the difference between seeing a picture of an adorable puppy and actually owning a dog. Yes, part of the experience is its adorable brown eyes and soft fur, but it's also about you carrying its poop around in a little plastic bag. The point is that love is the whole package. It's not a single emotion that can be identified and distinctively felt, like anger or happiness. It's a series of connections that exists above and beyond day to day emotion or circumstance. 

   To have someone place their heart in your hands, and trust you not to break it, is a tremendous undertaking, and one that I haven't always fulfilled. It's romantic to look in someones eyes, and tell them you love them. It's better still to be able to look in their eyes and see that they love you too. It's a responsibility that many of us are afraid to admit that we aren't prepared to handle. For as long as music and movies have been in existence, they've floated the notion that you get "one true love" or one "soul mate". The problem is, that idea is complete and utter bullshit. You realize it's bullshit about the sixth or seventh time in your life that you feel this emotion. Unfortunately, the only way to truly learn this is to experience it for yourself, to feel it come and go and come again. The joy, and the pain, and the expectations, and the disappointment that we experience in dealing with matters of the heart ultimately prepare us for how to deal with love, and all it encompasses. The key, like most things in life, lays in gaining some understanding.