even though i wasn’t one of those people that always had a partner in high school and i’ve never had anyone confess their love to me and tell me they would marry me in the future in kindergarten, i’ve always been a lover girl in my mind. i loved love, even when i haven’t experienced it yet. i simply loved the idea of loving someone, even more so than being loved. to my people-pleaser teenage mind, that sounded like something that would make me happier than being loved myself. i wanted to love for the sake of loving, i had crushes and such, but as years went by i realized more and more that none of those crushes were even that serious, and i hadn’t loved them. i just wanted someone that i could use to reflect my own yearning for those feelings. it never worked though, the system was flawed from the beginning. what i didn’t know back then is you can’t just pick and choose who you love, it’s not a decision up to you. i thought maybe if i daydreamed about them a little more, if i thought about them just a tiny bit more, those feelings could turn into the love i’ve been waiting my whole life to feel. they never did.

because love itself is not man-made. on the contrary, humanity is made from love, for love, and to love. maybe even our whole life purpose is to love. to love our job, to love a color so much that we buy a bunch of things in that color, to love someone enough to spend our lives with them, to love the home we create, to enjoy our limited time here on this earth, and to love life. loving the life you create for yourself is the end goal. so i stand by what i said earlier; us humans were brought into this world for the sake of love and only for love.1

as people, we want to love. we have a burning, raging itch in us that craves for us to love, not just someone, but anything really. to have favourites is our way of normalizing love in our daily life, of course i’m excluding relationships here. to have a favourite colour, a favourite musician, a favourite artist, or even simple things such as having a favourite fruit. it is our way of saying, “hey, look! i love this so much that i had to name it ‘my favourite’ and categorize it differently from others of its kind.” you love it so much that you make it special only for yourself, you name it your favourite and even though it might change one day, it keeps holding a special place in your heart in the future. we have to scratch that itch somehow or else it would be boring, wouldn’t it? to not have anything to look forward to, not searching for something in a specific colour, not searching for hours in an old bookstore just to find a book in your favourite genre. these little actions are what makes life worth fighting for, this little signals of love are the indicators that love is somewhere within all of us, whether we realize it or not.

the duality of love has always been an interesting topic to me. no matter how much we crave it, it’s scary. there’s no denying that it is one of the most frightening and intense emotions. it’s opening your ribcage and then handing your heart out to someone willingly, and trusting that they will take good care of it. love is peeling oranges for someone, while the juice oozes through your fingers and makes them sticky, hoping and praying that the orange is sweet enough for their taste, even though you like it sour. love is leaving a bouquet outside a door that was once open but not anymore, yet hoping there’s still someone in there to take the bouquet inside someday. it’s a trust fall, when you can’t even trust yourself that you’re strong enough to carry another person. but you hold onto them, even for the sake of falling yourself, you hold them so tight that they don’t get a chance to fall. sometimes love is the act of not letting go, holding onto the rope so hard that it scrapes your fingers and yet that pain is the reminder of the love that still remains. it is there, it is what makes you fight even more. yet sometimes, love is letting go. it is putting them on a raft you built when you’re both stranded on an island, and praying that they make it home safe. most of the time, it is painful to be the one waving from the shore as you watch them get smaller and smaller on the horizon, but sometimes you love someone so much that you realize what’s best for them is not the one in the mirror. you do it for their sake, you do it in hopes to see them happier.

it is the rawest emotion there is. it completely consumes your mind, body, and soul. a change in their tone ruins your entire day, a “can we talk?” text makes your heart beat so hard that you can literally feel it on your skin, a small argument feels like getting hit by a speeding car. it makes you cry so hard that your eyes become twice their size in the morning, it makes you wanna scream so hard that you literally feel the scream wanting to come out inside your throat, it feels like all you’ve done, everything that you worked for, it was all for nothing because of how much it makes you feel like a horrible person, to have upset someone else, someone that you promised to take care of. makes you question your own actions and reflect on them, think about what went wrong and where. and, of course, almost lose your mind while thinking about it. it is a wild, untamed wolf in sheep’s clothing. it’s messy, unpredictable, and terrifying.

oh, but how soft it is to the touch.

if you made it this far, i hope you enjoyed reading my overly corny thoughts about love, and i’d love to hear your comments and feedbacks. take care, know you’re loved.

xoxo thea