Love is a Hurricane and I am a Tree

I have never been good at the whole "love" thing.

And before you stop reading, I promise that this is not one of those ramblings about an ex-boyfriend who mistreated me and who I hate with the burning passion of a thousand white-hot suns (what girl doesn't have a story like that, seriously?). It's more about love-love. The word love, the world of love, what it means or rather, what I'm beginning to think it means. So ready? Here we go.

Love is... hard. Disney tells us that finding a "prince charming" is no big deal. That we'll find him walking down the street one day or that he'll appear with a lost flash drive or broken shoe and we'll fall in love and there will be a happily ever after. Fairy tales say the same, as do the various romance novels and beach reads that women so indulge themselves with. But from what I've seen, love just doesn't come easy. A relationship worth being in is a relationship that you have to work at, to some extent. Without two parties meeting halfway, it could hardly be called a relationship. That's more like a delusion.

Love is... selfless. Someone once told me that "love is the willingness to sacrifice for the greater good of the beloved," meaning that the true meaning of love is that you place someone before yourself. That's difficult to find in the me-world that we've all grown up in. We're concerned first with ourselves and then with everyone else. To me, this is the most beautiful part of love. The fact that we feel so strongly for the other that regardless of what the consequences are, we place them before ourselves and they do the same with us. That's a beautiful thing, to know someone will always be on your side.

Love is... unpredictable. It never really works out according to plan. It doesn't come when you want it to. It doesn't happen overnight. Love does what it wants to do. Sometimes expecting the unexpected doesn't even cut it and that's the best part about love: you never know when it's going to catch you off guard and make you smile a smile that could light up the world.

Love is... different than being in love. Being in love to me means being enamored with someone, there is lust and passion and intimacy but when being in love makes the transition to just love, only then do I feel like the passion, lust and intimacy translate into unconditionality. In love is temporary. Love is the best friend you'll find sits next to you forever.

So maybe love is a little like magic. It is in my world, anyway.