One of the questions that I hear the most is from people who've never been in love. They'll ask, "What is love? When you're in love, how do you know?"

And there is no real answer... just that you'll know when you're in love. You'll feel incredible when your love is around. It's like you're drowning in their presence. They're the thoughts you think, the air you breathe, and without them you suffocate. You can't live without them... every minute with them feels like an eternity...

And their faults are insignificant, you've become blind to them. Your friends don't understand what you see in them, but how could they? They aren't in love.

You love every moment with them, and you can never get enough. You do seemingly foolish things... like dancing in the rain wearing nothing but your underwear... having whipped cream fights at two in the morning... calling late at night so you can listen to each other's breathing as you fall asleep together...

You have long conversations about everything and nothing at all... you share passionate kisses that you know you could never share with another... you write songs and poems and stories... you're constantly inspired, it's like magic flowing through your veins...

And you start to think. You start to think a lot. You'll lie out on your front lawn and just gaze up at the stars, wondering, "what if...?". You'll see things in different lights. You'll get different perspectives. And it isn't because you've started to think like the other person, no, it's just because they've opened your eyes and given you a different outlook on life... they've shown you what you were missing all along.

You fight with them too, of course. They'll be dumb little fights about nothing important, and you'll look back later and laugh. But when they're happening, you'll get lonely. You'll miss them terribly but you'll be too stubborn to admit it. It's worth it when you make up, though. The sex is always great.

One of the best things about being together is that you'll always be able to depend on them. They make you laugh, you know, that gut-wrenching, rolling-on-the-floor, kind of laugher. They'll make you cry sometimes, too. And not just little cries, either. Those big horrible bawls, where your mascara runs streaky trails down your cheeks, and snot dribbles down your face in great, big, horrible globs... but they'll still love you. They'll apologize over and over, saying they didn't mean any of those cruel things they said, and you know they're telling the truth because you can see it in their eyes. And they'll comfort you until well after you've stop crying... and that's just one of the things that makes you love them.

You'll have days when you're together, and it flies by so fast that it seems to blur. And you'll have nights where each minute that ticks by seems like an eternity. Those nights where you hold each other painfully close, afraid to let go, because you're terrified it will end any second. You're terrified because there's a possibility that none of it's real. That it could all be an elaborate dream, fabricated out of need and desperation. So when you have those nights that seem to last forever, you hold on to them tightly, fearing that they might slip through your fingers if you take them for granted.

But then, one day... you wake up. You wake up and realize that none of it was real. It was all a lie, trying to get you to believe that it was right, that things could be good like that, but they can't. Nothing can ever be good like that. Nothing like that can ever stay.

So, you learn the hard way. You learn that fucking nothing lasts forever, especially love. You content yourself with believing that it was all fake, that none of it was ever genuine love.

But you know that regardless of how much time passes, and regardless of how much you push the thought from your head, you'll always have that little voice in the back of your mind that'll whisper softly whenever you begin to doubt your logic,

"But... it just seemed so real..."

~*~