love is....

love is giving everything you have without expecting anything in return.

love is the feeling that never giving up overpowers any other feeling that arise along the journey.

love is not remembering what life was like before.

love is not happiness; love is the strongest feeling in the world.

love is unconditional.

love is a commitment.

love is your soul and anger is your ego.

love is not flawless. it is not perfect. it is not a fairy tale.

love is the light that pulls you through the dark.

love feels safe when you are continuously lost.

love is a drug; the best kind of addiction.

love is unique to its felt individual.

love is holding another's darkness for them so that their light may shine bright as ever.

love is the feeling; commitment is the logic.

love is you. love is me.

love is laughing and it's crying.

love is not something to distract yourself from.

love is intuitive. don't fight it.

love is soul. it is divine and infinite.

love is the devil while he was still an angel.


From an early age we are aware of love. Maybe we love our parents and our dog. Maybe we are taught what love is supposed to be or we are witnesses to different kinds of love. Then we start experiencing our own feelings of love. Loving friendships and loving, romantic relationships. At first, we might assume just really feeling strongly about someone else means we are in love. And that's great, it's wonderful. We begin to physically feel love in the butterflies and euphoria and even in the heartache and stress. It all seems pretty basic and I think that it's a necessary stepping stone to the future of our love experiences. Just the same is with anything else in life, love is a learning experience. Each new time you feel those indicators that love may be on the horizon, doesn't it feel a little bit stronger, a little bit more "real" than the last time? It does for me and especially within my adult life thus far I have noticed great evolutions in my love experiences. As an adolescent I didn't have a grasp on the learning part, I didn't take the time to reflect or grow personally in my self-love and that became apparent in my attempts to love others. The way you feel about yourself will leak out in the way you feel about others and the way you express those feelings. So, having clear ideas about the kind of love you ultimate seek should be beneficial. But, these ideas may change over time and that's okay. Life and love exist on a fluid timeline that never stops moving forward. If you don't hang on tight and enjoy the ride, you may find yourself lost in confusion and depression (speaking from experience here, not just speculation).

Anyway, towards the end of my college days I found myself in an extremely destructive situation that I projected to be love at its core, but realized much later on that it likely was not. As turbulent as those two years were, what I took from it were my personal goals in loving another person. Trying to understand things outside of my own realm of mentality, unconditional companionship, basically never giving up until there was nothing to hold on to anymore. In some ways this can be harmful to the self and I was aware of that, but for me, ultimate love is painful sometimes and if you're not exerting every last ounce of vulnerability then you may end up with "what ifs" in the future and those are more detrimental to me. I knew that my next experience in love had to be quite the opposite. Going into it I had a slightly better sense of what I thought love to be and I dropped down my walls quickly and dove in head first hoping that Karma would recognize my intentions and reciprocate them. And they did. That love felt completely different than anything in the past and I attached onto it tightly. But, as we know it to sometimes happen, history began repeating itself inside my head. I had a better understanding of what I wanted to give to someone in love and what I wanted reciprocated but there were still other areas that I struggled with, communication and trust being the front runners. Needless to say, that was not the love meant for me either when I realized I still had a long way to go in loving myself.  Of course, I fought this for some time hoping for some fairy tale ending to fix the damage that had been done. But, I found myself alone and lost, again. I maintained my loneliness, proudly, for a couple of years. Really reflecting on the two previous experiences and how I could love myself and love another in such a way that it would never end. That's the true fairy tale, right? Never ending love. Sometimes pain and hurtful mistakes, but comfort in knowing the mutual commitment that you won't give up on each other. That is what I seek the most.

However, as I've learned in my most recent experience, not everyone views love the same. And different mental processes hold different ways of defining and expressing love as a feeling. For me, it's just that. Underneath any bullshit or ego, it's a magnetic force that I feel with another human being. But, for more logically based thinkers, things needs to match up. Compatibility must be in tact and, for me, I've learned that I don't know what compatibility even means. Is it sharing similar hobbies? Is it acceptance and support even when it's not something you entirely understand? Is it similar viewpoints? Is it similar communication styles? It's just not something that has been very prominent for me and maybe that's something to reflect and focus on moving forward.
I don't view anything as unchangeable and if there is conflict with love then there is a way to find some conclusion that results in growth. In my opinion, most conflict results from forcing that growth not only onto the other person, but onto yourself and your intertwined selves. Growth is not easy and a loving commitment is the glue that holds the growth together. I'm the first to admit how intense and sensitive I am as a person, a friend, a child, a co-worker, a sibling, a partner, etc. I have a very small logical window and I guess I've never put in the effort into strengthening that. So long as both individuals try to understand the differences, respect each other's needs and attempt to effectively communicate even if it takes longer than expected and it's harder than expected, I'm all in. Is this the right or wrong way for me to view love? I don't know. But, it's where I'm at now and I'm sure it will evolve even more over time.

At the end of the day, love is not a typical fairy tale. Instead, it's a unique fairy tale written for or by each individual person. I'm the farthest thing from perfect or even slightly put together. As soon as I think I have a hold on something I feel or believe, a new thought arises that forces me to question everything I had just settled on. I believe in soulmates (indescribable, energetic force) and I believe in timing. I've had multiple soulmates and I believe there are more out there. But, it's the timing in your life and the other's life that ultimately decides if you're mutually capable of real commitment.

"Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway."

"When I say I love you more, I don't mean I love you more than you love me. I mean I love you more than the bad days ahead of us, I love you more than any fight we will ever have, I love you more than the distance between us, I love you more than any obstacle that could try and come between us. I love you the most."