LOVE.

(one of my favorite quotes on love to begin this post)

so lately, i've been thinking a lot about love. as in i've been trying to decide what it really is, how you fall in love, out of love, etc. i read something on my friend's blog about it and that kind of fueled a lot of what i was already thinking.

i knew i loved someone, and that somehow we'd be together, about seven months before he realized the same about me. let me tell you right now, that is not something fun to go through. but, i wouldn't have said i "fell in love" with him then. i didn't "fall in love" with him until later. and i find it weird how these two things, "loving" someone and "falling in love" with them, are completely different. another thing that constantly astonishes me is how differently you love people. for example, though i love a lot of people, there are only two people i love enough that i can honestly say that if they were to die or cease to exist in my life, i would have trouble moving on: my sister and the guy i love. and of those two people, if i were to lose my sister, but have the guy i love to help me through it, i think i could eventually be okay with my life. what pains me to realize, and i just realized it last night, is that if i were to lose the guy and have my sister to help me through it, i don't know how i'd be. i honestly think that would be harder to get over, for me, than losing my sister.

my sister.

that is a realization that really hit me hard. of course, i don't want her to die. i would come close to a mental break down, if not have one, if she did; however, if i had the guy to help me through it, i think i would continue to be okay. this is the girl i grew up with, my best girl friend, the person i rely on the most in my household, and i truly think it would be easier to get over her death than the death of my significant other.

how messed up is that?

and, now, i'm not even with this guy. technically, i have no tie to him right now other than friendship. and, more, i've known him for only about two years, and yet i'm hopelessly in love with him. i don't even know if he loves me like that anymore; he says he does, but i've always had a hard time believing it. and, still, i would suffer physical pain for this guy. i say i love him, but i almost feel like that doesn't cover it. really, there is no "more powerful" word to describe it.

but love is so complicated. you can't reason with it, you can't control it, you can't say 'hey, can you just hold on a sec because now this guy's in a relationship...' you can't stop it, you have absolutely no say in what i consider to be love. love, in the sense of partnerships, is something that is completely unreal and inexplicable. it makes people act insane and can even make them go crazy. i want to say it's a feeling, but it's really not. a feeling is something you have for a second; i don't think that real, true love ever goes away. when people say they have fallen in love more than once, i always question that. can you fall in love more that once? can you fall in love with the wrong person? or do you just think that you love(d) them?

me, in my naivety, would love to believe that you only fall in love once in your life. that there is one person that can make your world spin, your mind jumbled, and give you that completely cliche feeling that everyone writes about but no one really understands until they themselves have felt it. i want to believe that if you really aren't meant to be with someone you thought you love, it's for the best because you'll find someone that you'll love past the point of reason.

but what if you can't imagine loving anyone more than you love someone now? what if the thought of loving someone else more than you love someone now makes absolutely no sense to you? i think that if i were to love someone more than the guy i love now, the world would implode, or, at the very least, i would. everything in the songs and stories not only make sense to me, but they undercut it. i'm convinced that no one loves another person like i love him, which i know is probably completely wrong. i feel stupid saying things like this not only are they cliche, but no one believes that someone can meet the person they will love for the rest of their life at the mere age of fifteen (which was how old i was when i met him). no one believes that this is legitimate; 'oh, its teenage love, how cute!' they say. i want to stomp my feet and yell, 'it's not like that!' because it's not. and, i know one day i might take back everything i'm saying now, i'm not stupid enough to think everything i'm feeling now will stay, i'm just saying that i'm pretty sure i won't find anyone that i love as much as him. and, sometimes, i hate it.

because it's really not fair. not to me. not to him...

i've digressed.

love.

i guess, i just think that it is a compilation of feelings mixed with the unimagined and the unbelievable. falling in love takes you by surprise, or so it has with me. and falling out of love seems damn near impossible. love is something you have to experience and when you do, you'll know. it makes you lose sight of everything else.

the other day i was talking to my guy about how love and sex really are linked. though we aren't together, we still love each other, and i don't know. like love, my relationship is complicated. but i've always had my friends saying that what me and him have is lust, or teenage love, or some other term that is no where near close to describing what we really have. lust is just sex. i was saying that even if i never passed kissing my guy, i would be fine. i could live a perfectly happy life if all i could do was be with and/or kiss him. the reason that you have sex with someone, at least in my mind, is because you love them and you are just so overwhelmed that you need to touch them, feel them, etc., and that's the most intense way to do so. he was telling me that he could honestly sit next to me forever just holding me, and he wouldn't complain. and i agree. people judge teenagers with they have sex mostly because they can't believe that they are in love, and probably a majority of the time they aren't.

but when you are in love. and you love someone else so much it honestly hurts at times. and when missing them is the worse pain imaginable... i can't see anything that would be more intense than that. i can't picture meeting anyone that makes me happier than him.

but, at the same time, if he were to tell me that he didn't love me. that he found someone else who made him happier (something i'm half-convinced is going to happen), i'd let him go. happily. sure, i'd be miserable, but as long as he is happy, i can live with that. and i know a lot of people say that and don't mean it. but i lived nearly eight months practicing that belief and while it would be harder to go back to it now, i would. i need him to be happy, and if that is with me then you won't hear me complain about anything, but if that's with someone else, i'll deal with it.

and, really, if that isn't "true love" i don't know what it is, but i can't wait to see because i can't imagine anything better, worse, more confusing, more exhilarating than this.

i'll probably think of more important things i wanted to say later, but oh well. i'll edit or something. ha.

[10.21.09]