The Spectrum of Love

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what love is to me. For a while now I’ve had this idea that the world is love and that’s all fine and dandy, but just like my professor said to me, what does that actually mean? Well, I think I might be starting to figure that out. Love is a very broad, wide-ranged topic and it encompasses a lot of different categories. I love pizza, my old worn out white vans and my grandma, but all three of these things fall into a different category of love. Pizza, well I just love that because it tastes incredible. My vans, those hold a nostalgic type of love for me. The fact they are so worn out has a sort of romantic appeal to me because I know what they’ve been through, the memories I’ve made while wearing them. And my grandma, well she’s my inspiration, the strongest woman I’ve ever met in my life and I don’t know where I would be without her. See how these things are different, how they fall in different categories of love? And that is precisely why I love, love. It can be so general and so detailed all at the same time. I can love pizza as much as I love my grandma, just for different reasons.

And then there is romantic love, my favorite love, but also a type of love I have yet to truly experience. I get glimpses of it every now and then, but never in full. But, I do understand how there is absolutely no rush, love must be an organic thing. For, if it is forced, it is not true. And that’s really all I want in this life, true love.

I was reading this book, one of those self-help types, always claiming to have the fix for all your life struggles, but never really helping. Well this one actually had some interesting advice. The general idea was something like this…everyone wants to be successful, rich and find love. And well, that’s super easy to make such a broad statement about the success you are looking for in life, but it’s also not an entirely true statement. What you really want, what you actually are looking to find success in is the things you want to struggle for in life. So, what are you willing to struggle for in this life? What am I willing to struggle for in this life? Is it love? As much as my stone-cold heart might not want to admit it, I think it might be. If I believe the world is love then that must be what I’m going to struggle for. And as much as I may want to deny my feelings and emotions, if I reflect on my past, most of my struggles came from romantic relationships.

I want to struggle for love because in my opinion, being in love, finding a true love, that’s my definition of success. I give a fuck about love, a real, true love. There’s something about love. Something about emotions and the feeling you get when the right person intertwines their hand with yours. You can tell when it’s all true, you get the right feeling. You lay with the person and you don’t want to be anywhere else. You look at them and get lost in their eyes. You kiss them and never want to pull away. You sit with them and never wonder if there is someone, something, better somewhere else.

But with all love comes a side of pain. Because if you are really loving someone you are holding their heart much more tenderly then your own. And though you may have your own life and self, they are the most important; their feelings, their emotions, their heart. I am a firm believer that if there is real love, if you truly care about another person you are going to have issues, you are going to fight. Fighting, arguing, and disagreeing may cause pain, but it also makes you grow. All the disagreements come from love. You care about a person so much that everything they say and do matters and affects your heart. So, one little word, one short sentence can send someone into a tizzy. But, like I said before, if the love is really true it will prevail and the differences that the two of you once had will dissolve…and then you are back, right where you started, holding their heart more tenderly then your own…actually you never stopped doing that because they are your everything.