What is Love?

Baby don't hurt me.....

Okay, seriously though. Honest question. What is this love that we feel? What is this all-consuming emotion that inspires people to go to such lengths? Why does it have such an effect on our souls?

For me, love has been a sort of refiners fire- a way by which I discovered more about myself. It has been both a crutch and a pair of wings, gentle, kind, and also not. Ended well and ended horribly, though mostly the second, which inspired my post about people in relationships. Love has been something constant in my life, in ways both bad and good.

Just recently however, I have really begun to learn what it truly is. Or at least I've learned what the feeling is that truly inspires rather than a simple crush. I'll call it Love, with a capital "L" as that's how it feels, like a capital letter.

Love is consuming in a weird way. It's the first thing on your mind, but it doesn't take up everything. The best Love leaves room for the rest of your life and is still there after the day is done. Really, Love is a support, a companion, what is there when you feel all else is lost.

It also is gentle, at least the way I feel it. This Love doesn't push for more than I'm willing to give. It doesn't make unreasonable demands. It makes the other person so real to me, their wants and their feelings become so much more important than very nearly anything. In Love is being all you can for them. It affects you in a fundamental way, making you better. True Love makes you a better person.

Love is letting somebody into the corner of your heart reserved only for the things you hold most dear-that's how I recently explained it to someone close to my heart. That special corner, the one where you keep your treasured memories, and whenever you visit it, you smile. It is full of light and letting them in, letting anyone in, is a huge risk, but for Love, you're willing. For Love, because they're worth the risk.

Love is being broken, being open. It's putting all those hidden faults and cracks on display, in hopes that they can patch it, and that they won't ignore them or break them further.

I once read something that explained life as a puzzle. Gradually we're all putting our puzzles together, but no matter how we try, there's one piece that just won't f fit. The shape and the color, the picture, it's just wrong. So we get on our hands and knees, we're searching under the table and chairs, and suddenly you bump hands with someone. Perhaps you apologize, look up sheepishly and giggle. You discover that you both have the same problem- one piece that doesn't fit. Turns out somehow they must have gotten switched. That's Love, I think. That extra piece, the grand mix-up of the universe. You have my piece and I have yours. I think that truly is Love, being that piece that fits just right.

But Love is also pliable-and I hope my best friend will pardon my kidnapping of his words. I just adore how he phrased it,  "Nobody feels it the same way, it changes through a person's life. Though, difficult to do, you can stop loving someone. Love is life and life is something that you constantly experience and you don't experience everything the exact same way all the time. Pliable is a great way to describe love."

Love is life, shifting. Different for each of us, and yet here we are, living and loving and existing in any way we can. That is Love.