𝑩𝒖𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒄𝒖𝒑 | ᴊᴀᴍᴇs ᴘᴏᴛᴛᴇʀ

1 | 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 - 𝐈

"𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑦, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑑𝑎𝑦
𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑖𝑠𝑡, 𝑚𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟, 𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑑."

𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐫 , 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐦𝐚

Love is a strange thing. It is one of the only things in the universe that can be truly unconditional and felt by all—animals, humans, anywhere and everywhere. Love is needed like mammals need air to breathe and how plants need sunlight, a life without it is likely to be a lonely one.

Love, much like a human being, comes in many different shapes and sizes, in different situations, and can be found all over the world. From the busy cities to the Antarctic, coastlines to the midlands, love is felt everywhere. It needs to be felt everywhere. For one's own sake.

Forms of love can vary from creature to creature, love between blood family, found family, platonic love, and animal love. The love one may feel for a particular song, an item of clothing, or an inanimate object, like a book or a sentimental totem. Of course, the way love is felt and expressed towards these forms is going to change, simply based on timing and situation. The first time one may eat a loved food, possibly as a young child, the love felt for that meal may be indifferent to any other type of food as a preference has not grown and developed. Over time, as one grows older and life throws its hardships one's way or one has experienced a tough day at a workplace, the comfort that a dish can bring could make all the difference to how a day is perceived.

When one is young and may not know any better, living with family can be a particularly hard experience, and moving out to start a family of one's own could not come any quicker. Unfortunately, the true extent of love felt in a family is often only realised once a loved one is no longer around. Realising the missed opportunities of love hit as hard as falling into water from a high place.

Grief is a subject not often discussed when it comes to love, however, it is a painful thing that almost always comes alongside it. Grief for a loved one is different from grieving one's past or future. Losing a loved one is one of if not the most difficult experiences an organism can process, so difficult that it often remains painful for the rest of an organism's life, erupting at the strangest times as excruciating as the day the news came. Grief can only be described as the sinking feeling in the stomach experienced after walking up a flight of stairs in the middle of the night and believing there is one extra step than there is, one's foot falls through the floor in a panicked silence as the heart drops. A smell, a taste, a song, a place. A feeling that will never be forgotten, a crack in a life that will never be filled.

Grieving a past or a future can be associated with an inordinate amount of experiences in both life and death. A life-changing illness or disability could leave one grieving the life they had before, the things they were able to do before and now cannot, and the plans the future once held, the goals yet to be achieved that may now never be accomplished.

Grief can be expressed for someone who is not in death's clutches but one is no longer in contact with, whether it be a loved one or a best friend. Grief can be felt for someone one thought they had never experienced love for, an abusive parent or grandparent one rarely sees.

It is a common belief that the more a person is loved, the more that person is missed. The wider gaping hole that is left in a close-knit community, the more pain that is shared.

Grief and love share several things. Both cause heartbreak, both destroy lives and families, and neither has ever been felt by Aria Whittaker.

Human beings need love in their lives like they need air to breathe and Aria was suffocating, drowning in both guilt and the abundance of clothes she was attempting to haul up the ladder to the attic. The sweet embrace of love had never surrounded Aria. She had yet to be exposed to the warm fulfillment of the heart one often experiences after a lengthy conversation with someone who cares, the giddiness one is left with after a compliment from someone respected or even the relief and joy felt after a long catch-up with a friend one has not seen in quite a while.