Love is...

"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." 

- Sophocles 

This is one of those posts where you feel like getting it all out but you almost wish nobody would read it.  One of those posts that most people would look at and think omg pass this is another wishy washy girly post...

When I was younger, love was infatuation, where the object of my desire occupied my thoughts, 24-7.  I would imagine scenarios where we were together, how we'd grow old together, and all sorts of romantic, snuggly encounters where I wished that my object of infatuation would love me with the same adoration that I had for him.

"Love is friendship set on fire." 

- unknown

Then lust comes into the picture and then physical attraction starts to become what you think is love.  You crave the other person, you want to touch them, you want to look at them.  They are perfection to you and you couldn't imagine anything more desirable or perfect, and then you imagine all sorts of raunchy sexy encounters that make your heart pound and desire and arousal consume you.

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams". 

- Dr Seuss

I realise now that love is not just something that you feel.  The most important thing about love is that it's something that you share.  You can't love someone who doesn't love you back.  People talk about how love hurts.  That's not love.  The hurt is the rejection that you feel because your emotion is not returned to you and you feel empty inside, cheated.  Love is still the physical and the romantic - that's part of the whole package.  The really great thing about love is that you are in it together, and you both have a common goal - to make each other happy.  Love is not about possession, or jealousy.

"We were given: Two hands to hold. Two legs to walk. Two eyes to see. Two ears to listen. But why only one heart? Because the other was given to someone else. For us to find." 

- unknown

What about love for family? Or a child? Or friends?  Those kinds of love I admit are different.  The protective kind.  Where you only want the best for them, hope for the future for them, wish the well in everything they want to achieve.  I only wanted to write today about the romantic notion of a soulmate, the joining of two minds, hearts and bodies to give that uplifting emotion of love.  And you wish that everyone in the world could find their other half, because you can't imagine why anyone would be unhappy if you had that to hold onto.

"Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale." 

- anonymous