when someone loves you it mean this

I'm trying to understand love, I'm trying to absorb it in its entirety and it's the most difficult thing I've had to do. Not 'loving' itself. Not the love where you look into their eyes and find your glowing reflection in their dark pearls because their heart is now with yours.

The love that's imperfect and painful and messy. The love that causes us to say hurtful words without thinking twice about them and then regrets the way those words made the person we love feel later. The love that's irrational and emotional and unable to see anything other than your own aching. The love that's jealous and insecure and hurtful and mean and sometimes inconsiderate. The love that asks of you to make compromises, to make sacrifices, to bite your tongue when you bubble with anger and to let it go, even when your mind doesn't let you. The love that has to put its grief to the side and learn to put them first, the love that hurts as much as it heals.

Because love comes in every shade. The love that makes you both happy is also the love that can hurt you both and it's the balance between the hurting and happiness that I need to find.

So, I'm still trying to understand love in its entirety, and I know that even when I'll feel like I've got it all figured out - I'll peel off new layers of love as time goes on, I'll find new shades as I delve further into it, I'll realise what love is and what it isn't, and when it's kind to your heart and gentle to your soul, and when it has the potential to turn you into stone.

I will keep learning and keep experiencing and perhaps one day, after having every adventure and with the person who gives me that love, I will finally uncover what love truly means to me.