What is Love? And other dilemmas

What is Love?

If you're like me, you may have been told at some point in your life that you're "too young" to know what love is, but if you were to then respond with;

"Okay, what is love?"

you'd probably get a whole range of answers depending on the person and their experiences. The thing is, I don't think it's a matter of how old or young you are. I think we as a species are completely clueless when it comes to love; a feeling we basically made up.

There are different types of love. Family love, friend love, and romantic love. You discover more of these "types" as you grow and learn. For instance, when I was a baby, I don't remember loving. I didn't know how to, it wasn't locked in my brain as something that I could do. I probably loved my parents and my toys without realising it was an emotion and I probably wouldn't until a while later.

I then grew a little bit, and knew a little more. I felt that the definition of love was sharing germs and the same juice box as someone else. Love was being kissed goodnight and hugged each morning. Love was a much simpler thing then. I didn't care about who I loved. It was almost unconditional.

The next stage was finding out that it wasn't a thing you could just do, you had to work up to it. This was, of course, the start of high school. Home of the immature relationships and the judgemental eyes of people I thought were friends at the time, because there was still that part of me that loved unconditionally. Of course, I learned the hard way, being brought up in a family where I'd never experienced anything other than love (and on the odd occasion, what I thought was hate but was considered sibling rivalry and still love to some people), when I told a few boys that I loved them on the first day. After being laughed at by my peers, I thought of love in an entirely different way and I took my time to love. Maybe even too much time.

This is the stage that I am at.

I moved from sharing those juice boxes to sharing intimate experiences. My friends would describe love as doing anything for a person, even dying for them. For a while, I thought they were right until I found myself being loved romantically by someone (or so I thought, and still do sometimes). Long story short, it ended how these things usually end; with me on the couch for a few days, pouring my broken heart out through my eyes while watching Moulin Rogue (which is THE WORST breakup movie and I would recommend avoiding it at all costs, especially in any low point in your life). I then questioned whether I was loved at all by him because of how badly I was hurting.

This brings me to another point;

You can't know for certain if someone loves you.

This is because there is this awful thing that we also invented called lying. People lie because it's easier than telling the truth. If you say that you've never lied before, you're the biggest liar of all. Lying is a problem in this world, and it's not just lying to other people. You can also lie to yourself. It's the reason so many people have trust issues. If it didn't exist, we'd have a lot more love and a lot less sad lumps on the couch for days at a time eating peppermint choc chip ice cream and watching depressing movies.
That's my theory, anyway.

You don't have to go through a breakup to question what love is. For me, it started when an infatuated friend claimed he was in love with a girl he'd known for five weeks and dated for three. I'd been with my boyfriend at the time for seven months at that point and I'd only just gained enough courage to tell him that I loved him. So me being me, I told my friend that it was too early for it to be love. He then proceeded to argue his point, that he'd talked to her about all things possible and how he knew her so well. Or so he thought because she broke it off a couple of days later.

The whole incident had me thinking;

"Who am I to tell people what love is?"

because I truly didn't know the answer, and I still don't. For an idea that we created based off primal instincts to breed or to be dependant on our family, we sure don't know much about it. We have ideas and theories about how it works, but we don't have solid answers. It is completely beyond anything we know or can imagine.

And maybe, just maybe, it doesn't exist.