infantile love follows the principle: "i love because i am loved."
mature love follows the principle: "i am loved because i love."
immature love says: "i love you because i need you."
mature love says: "i need you because i love you."
it took me a long time to realize WHY it takes us so long to get over someone we really truly love, but i think i finally got a grasp on it. love does not die easily. it is a living thing. it thrives in the face of all of life's hazards, save one -- neglect.
i always wondered why when i was crazy, head over heels in love with someone, i could never find the right words to say. everything that came out never seemed right or enough or whatever you want to call it... well, now i know. "love makes mutes of those who habitually speak most fluently."
there have been lots of times where i was confused about the difference between romantic love and something deeper, that love that you can't really put a name on or define very well, and I'm probably not going to come even close to putting these thoughts into a decent definition of the difference, but hell, I'll try anyway... in "real" love you want the other person's good. in romantic love you want the other person. while romantic love is good and necessary for the relationship to work, "real" love is by far the more important of the two. love is more than just a feeling: it's a process requiring continual attention. loving well takes laughter, loyalty, and wanting more to be able to say, "i understand" than to hear, "you're right."
love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
so i used to think that love was like a bed of roses, that everything in love would be easy, because you love the person. that is false. and it is true. where there is love, there is pain, but where there is great love, there are always miracles. we can be going through the toughest of times in our relationships, but real, true love can conquer anything. even the impossible. because with great love, there is no impossible.
on the other side of the tracks, i hate love. it's horrible, isn't it? it makes us so vulnerable. it opens your chest and your heart and it means someone can get inside you and messes you up. you build up all these defenses. you build up these huge fucking walls for years, so nothing can hurt you... then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...
you give them a piece of you. they don't ask for it. they do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. love takes hostages. it gets inside you. it eats you from the inside out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart or a time bomb that has just ticked its last second. it REALLY hurts. it kills. not just in the imagination. not just in the mind. it's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. i hate love. i do. i hate it with all that i have.
love is pain, love is sacrifice, love cannot be reasoned with, but it is necessary to my survival. and this wasn't meant to come off as some bitching about my life. quite the opposite, really. i need love. to breathe, to sleep, to live my goddamn life. i have been captured, body and soul, and i have no choice but to be a slave to my own heart, a bond-servant to its desires. for that is what i am.
(how's that for a deep meaningful blog?)
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