I often think of the few times where I assumed I was in love(*Laughs at the idea of it because I am too young to be thinking I was ever in love) and I think of the times where I thought I could be in love.
If there was ever a word that conveys a feeling in the most obscure manner, this is the one, LOVE. I just can’t help but think of the times where I blindly believed my own desires to be an emotion of much torment such as this.
I have never understood the idea behind Love. I mean, you get affection, and that in itself can be considered love, you get loyalty, trust and companionship, those can be considered love too. You get the self-sacrificial idealisms that are often expected out of specific affections and so on. All so that, one can be happy.
But What of it?
I am at an age of thinking, where I understand what people apparently do in the name of loving another and the importance of such thoughts and actions in continuously being signs of LOVE . But I am also at a time of thinking where I question what love means to differing individuals. As though when we say we love someone, we solely mean we love them alone….!?
Our parents love us(for those whom cannot relate, you have someone who loves you intently and wholeheartedly without question), but that does not mean that they only love us(one specific person which in this case is you), alone. If a parent can still say they love their one child and go on to have another, and thus love wholly, equally, with meaning and with as much as the same love, that they love the first of their children. Why is it that it is hard for people to accept that you can love one and another at the same time? When did love begin meaning fealty to only one person? Or rather, what makes us believe that this is the true meaning of loving someone, that they are the only person in our existence that can meet the needs of love in that instance and we are the only ones’ that can meet theirs?
What is love when you are angry at someone? Do you love them less? Or do you hate them? Is it a possibility to love someone and still hate them at the same time? If so, what is it not to make it possible to Love more than one person equally at the same time?
Understand me, I am not justifying infidelity, but rather I question humanity’s naivety in defining not CHEATING as proof of loving one specific person. It isn’t hard for me to imagine Love to be an emotion just as ordinary as hatred, or admiration. All specie get bored of something/someone. If we didn’t, the current lens that our world exists in, would not be favourable to the continuous new shows, phones, homes and many other innovations that come about because we loved, yes, and went on to love another because it was better, newer and not the one we already had.
I am not trying to equate partnerships of love to a product, but maybe that is the problem with my generation (and 4 or so generations before my own’s) definition of love, that we consider it a changeable product(dating), and then suddenly, you are unable to change the product(marriage). It is demeaning to think of partners as products but it is the best explanation of how confusing love is defined and meant in our current society.
So much pain, heartache and suffering accommodates love, but so does affection, trust, understanding and support. My question beckons, why is it so hard to think love as not singular commitment? That we are souls that long for love, some outgrow the idea of one kind of love to seek out another, and others simply enjoy the same kind of love that they always had and continue to cherish.
Perhaps it is just me, but much of the “I love you’s” that have been said in this world, are simply just affirmations for promises that were said without understanding or consideration and that in itself makes saying it ironic. If it were a contract, you’d be signing it without understanding if you can guarantee the conditions that have been set.
Perhaps what bothers me even more, is the fact that there is apparently some chivalry, longingness in being able to only love one person. This duopoly, that you can only truly love someone if you can only love them is toxic, but then… I sound like a naïve fool with no understanding of love.
But it is not my burden to shoulder, continue with your “I love you’s”, but know that it shouldn’t mean you don’t mean it just because you require the presence or another.
What comes to mind 