What is love? It sure is something the world could do with some more of right now. I was recently going through some things on my bookshelf, when I found something I’d written when I was 16. Dated the 8th of October, I had a vague recollection of writing it in 2008, when I’d been dating my husband for almost a month. Although I’d previously had a blog, I didn’t have one at the time. Really, it kind of is a blog post, but written on paper.
One of my best friends had asked me what love was, when I told her that I loved my boyfriend. She told me that she didn’t believe what I had was love, as I was only a teenager. She used examples of old couples where one has dementia and the other takes care of them as true love. While I believe that love gets stronger over time, I truly believed that what I felt at that time was love. The fact that I have now been happy with Dave for 9 years hopefully reflects that! After having the discussion we had over MSN messenger, I felt like I wanted to write about it. When I found this letter, it was interesting looking back and reflecting on my teenage thoughts about love.
Wednesday 8th October
“Love”
Recently, particularly the last couple of days, I have been thinking about love a lot. It especially came to light last night when someone asked me to describe love. I realised then that everyone has different interpretations of what love it yet everyone agrees that it’s amazing and everybody craves love.
While the dictionary usually describes what words mean very well, I can’t help but think it is a little vague when it comes to “love” and really fails to do it justice. It says love is:
-
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- Warm affection
- Benevolence
- Charity
- Sexual passion
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While I will agree that love is made up of a mixture of those things, there is so much more to it than that. Perhaps the reason the dictionary cannot do it justice is because unlike practically all the other words in the dictionary there is so much more to it.
In my opinion, love is completely unlike other emotions as it is far more complex. It can pull people through illness and I believe that love lasts even into death. I mean I know I haven’t stopped loving my Grandad and he’s never stopped loving me.
I think there are two main types of love, if not more. The ones I’ve discovered are family/friendship type love and the romantic type love that everyone seems to automatically assume is meant when love is mentioned. However, people are constantly using love as a way of saying they really like something. E.g. “I love chocolate” or “OMG! I love that dress!” Although I do use it like that, I don’t see it as really meaning love…I wouldn’t give my life for chocolate. In my experience, family/friendship love is quite a strange thing. My brother and I are like chalk and cheese. We are completely different and are constantly at war. Yet at the end of the day, we know that we have that family love and would stand up for one another if anything happened to either of us. Parents and children also have a similar bond. While you may spend most of your time at each others throats…children rebelling and parents constantly moaning and nagging…ther’s a bond of family love that makes you feel guilty afterwards and you love each other no matter what.
Romantic love in my experience is a completely different kettle of fish. It’s like friend/family love but with other intense feelins on top of it. It was romantic love I focused on last night when asked to describe what love is. I said”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~”
I know I’m young and one of my friends reckons that means I don’t love my boyfriend…she thinks it’s impossible for people to love in their teens While I can understand it isn’t as intense as the love old married couples may have for each other when they nurse their spouse when they are ill and possibly dying…I would still consider it to be love. Take my parents for example – they have been together since they were teenagers and have remained together through thick and thin, even when my mum fell pregnant with me when she was 17. So although it’s incredibly rare and there are so many silly clueless teenage girls who declare they are in love every week, judging by my feelings, I would consider myself to be in love.
Lozza
x
P.s. I also discussed why people say “I love you from the bottom of my heart” with my best friend. She said it’s only approximately 15cm and surely it would be so much more meaningful if you said “I love you from the bottom of my feet”. I told my boyfriend this, and to my surprise he didn’t seem to think I was weird. I guess it’s meant to be, lol 🙂
Reading the above made me smile. While I was only 16, it seems as though I had a pretty good grasp of love and what it means.
You had a good head on your shoulders back then! I’d be too embarrassed to share anything I wrote at that age, and my grasp on love was very poor and led to some shocking choices.
Your handwriting is beautiful!
#postsfromtheheart