…I think most of us today are confused with what love really is.

What is love? Is it that feeling in your heart that you get when the girl that you like walks by? Or like…when bells ring and all that. Even at the end of a romantic dinner, or perhaps giving away your virginity…as expected of rhetorical questions, none of these things are love.

Okay those weren’t the best examples. But hey, I’m seventeen. Technically, I shouldn’t know anything about love. But I’m pretty sure about some things.

Firstly, love isn’t feelings, or ‘a feeling’. Feelings, quote Wikipedia and pretty much any other complex encyclopedia there is out there, are ‘used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch either through experience or perception. The word is also used to describe physical sensation apart from touch such as "a feeling of warmth".[1] In psychology the word is usually reserved for the conscious subjective experience of emotion.’

While we all have no doubt how truly awesome feelings are, contrary to popular belief, feelings do fade. They may take seconds, a few minutes, several hours, maybe days or weeks, even months and years but feelings do fade. Some couples, after over 2 decades of what others would consider a beautiful marriage-well they separate because their feelings just came and went. It’s sad, really. It’s not necessarily wrong to base a relationship on feelings-after all, how one develops friendships, partnerships, and the right to call someone a teammate primarily revolves around how you feel about them. You could think, ‘hey, this person’s nice.’ ‘I get along well with this person’ ‘This person’s really snart,’ ‘This guy really understands me’. Things like that are obviously natural and without doubt, a joy to have. But unfortunately, feelings do fade. First impressions do become erased, opinions do change. I’m not saying that the person you have a good first impression of is bound to be something else; I’m just saying not to get carried away-because it really isn’t love.

Sidetracking a little, I don’t know how many of you believe in love at first sight. When I was a kid I really loved the idea of ‘love at first sight.’ In fairy tales, it was so romanticized and it all sounds so amazing and beautiful, and there would always be-a happy ending. I was so obsessed about it that the crush I had on the first girl I ever really liked lasted 8 and a half years-all the way from Kindergarten to several years ago. Those feelings can really go far, and carry you a long way.

But how do we define love? Do we really love someone by putting in effort to memorize facts about what they do and where they live? Or because that person looks incredibly good? Hell, that person doesn’t even need to look good-as long as he or she leaves such an incredible first impression on you that you can genuinely believe that you love that person.

…for me, I never really argued with that until a while ago. See, it doesn’t really add up. Love doesn’t and shouldn’t involve obsessing in someone’s privacy, it shouldn’t involve the superficiality of someone’s looks-as I’m certain of, beauty is only skin deep. Again, not the best example, but I’m pretty sure someone can see where I’m coming from. You don’t truly love someone without knowing who they are-inside and out or without having even a friendship with them-that’s not love. (I’m starting to see why this topic is so controversial)

Okay back to the main topic.

See the thing about love is that it really, really holds up. Anyone in a committed, loving relationship will tell you that it’s not easy. It always has to be worked on, there are always arguments, disagreements-no couple in this world is fully compatible or perfect. But when it comes right down to it, people who genuinely love each other and long to satisfy the other’s happiness-as well as possessing the ability to compromise DUE to this love that they generate for each other-they last. They endure.

I’m pretty sure by now that most of you get that the ‘love’ I’m referring to here is a boy-girl relationship kind of love, because there are always different variations of love-which is another thing that makes it so great. You don’t just feel you’re loved, you know completely and wholeheartedly that you’re loved and you understand that you’re loved. Because feelings are conditional, but love is not.

Some of you might not believe in love. At all. Maybe you feel it’s hypocritical, emotionally lying to yourself. I mean, just because the guy’s blood related to you and younger and cuter, you have to give up that soft toy you’ve always loved! (okay, again-not a good example, but the one I personally remember most distinctly since I’m sure my brother felt this way) There are so many other examples-like having to do things you don’t want to do because you feel compelled to do so: the parties in subject being friends or family? It feels pretty miserable, doesn’t it? It doesn’t feel right at all, and if ‘love’ is that way…well it sucks big, doesn’t it. You can feel so emotionally cheated.

Well, take a woman who recently had a baby. She’s already been suffering from the whole process-including mood swings, severe change in diet and all that, just getting back from the hospital and serious lack of sleep-but yet she still gets up at 3 in the morning to stop the baby from crying by feeding him or changing his diaper, or something like that.

Do any of you think that she-in any way, remotely enjoyed doing that? In any way, does anyone think she would rather be getting a healthy and good night’s sleep? And as I said for rhetorical questions that are really obvious, I’ll just answer it anyway- ‘of course not,’ and ‘DUH!’

…but would any of you agree, if I said that she didn’t love the child? That some part of her-while she didn’t enjoy doing this, did it anyway for something other than feeling emotionally compelled?

In the same way, many of us…we do things we don’t like all the time for people that are close to us in our lives. We may not like it, we may even be blatantly clear about the fact we don’t like it, and of course, may whine and complain about it, but we do it anyway. That’s just a small variation of love.

Just in case the whole thing didn’t sound quite as good as I meant to put it, my point is that-well isn’t that pretty amazing? As human beings, we all have our pride, we all have our objectivity about things and different opinions, but what we really do is put away our own happiness and satisfaction on a certain subject in order for someone we care about to achieve their own happiness. It might not sound that great now, but it really is amazing. And it is just a small variation of real love.

I really envy couples who make it right to the end, because they experience love in their lives any day and everyday and pretty much anytime. Most couples even argue because of how much they love each other. It’s really something to wish for.

Like I said earlier, feelings are conditional-love is not. Why I said this-well if love was so conditional then I’m pretty sure Mother Theresa wouldn’t have offered her Nobel Prize to the people, Lim Bo Seng might have given up his country and God just might not have sent down Jesus to save all of us. For anyone who didn’t understand, never mind because I’m not actually trying to promote religion or anything-I’m making a point.

…to be perfectly honest with myself, I could go on for about another 6 or 7 Microsoft pages of this, but the feeling that I have in my heart has just started to sink in.

See, contrary to what everyone else thinks I didn’t ACTUALLY spend time thinking about this. I just wrote it. I was feeling a little dejected and slightly numb, and I thought that I’d write on a topic I feel strongly about and the words just flowed. I’ve been writing for about an hour now, but the words don’t seem to flow very well when you have a burden on your heart.

I got a girl I really like to reject me today. Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it? If you think so too, it’s because it IS.

I know I’m just an adolescent teenager, so YES, it could have been just a crush, YES, it could have been puppy love, YES it could be infatuation since she is so insanely beautiful, and other variations of the three I already named, but the truth and the point is: I already know that.

Some people say that ‘you don’t require a reason to like someone, you just…do’. I really disagree, strongly disagree. You can’t just ‘like’ someone, otherwise its really just one of the three I already named. You like-like someone in an emotionally way when you can show genuine concern for them without sucking up to them just because you like them.

You like them because they leave a really good and continuous impact on you.

Maybe you like them for their character. They could be independent, smart, talented, beautiful, sensitive to your emotions and sensitive to her own, and all sort of traits like that.

You like them because you can trust them. I’m pretty sure this applies for all relationships.

You like them…maybe it can be some of the quirks they have. Maybe its some moments you’ve had with them because they’ve really opened up to you and shown the kind of person they really are. It can be as simple as them being nice to you, or as complex as you liking them for their faults.

…how could you not like someone, without a reason?

So anyway, I like her for a lot of reasons. And the gist of it is pretty much that she was very open with me and really treasures our friendship-as I do as well, because I’ve really tried being just friends with her and like it-but she basically doesn’t think of me romantically, and I had to hear her say it because otherwise…well I would essentially die. I was obsessing, worrying, thinking…it distracted me from everything. I couldn’t sleep well, I overate, I couldn’t do anything I loved or was good at well-like writing and basketball. (Incidentally this is the first time I’ve been writing seriously)

See, I wasn’t obsessing over getting her phone number (maybe because I already have it) or whether she’d still look as beautiful in three decades (though I just realized how almost-comical this question is) but I really worried about whether she didn’t like me because of…something!

Could it be that I was younger than her by a year? Or that I wasn’t mature enough for her in general? Or maybe she just didn’t see me that way? Worse case, maybe she didn’t even think I was remotely good enough for her-whatever it was; paranoid thought kept filling my mind, and since I still considered I had an aorta of a chance regardless of a losing battle-well I’m stubborn and I don’t think well that way.

…anyway, I already knew she liked someone else and I really wanted to respect hers and the guy’s wishes because of…well I wanted to. The guy is honestly a great guy, which doesn’t help me emotionally because I could probably get some inane satisfaction if the guy was a jerk and I hated him, but he’s such a good guy. Damn. But obviously, I couldn’t help considering my own feelings. So, knowing that I would most likely do something stupid, I had to really ask how she honestly felt about me romantically.

Obviously it did not go too well for me, or I wouldn’t be writing this right now. I’m not exactly disappointed, and I’m kind of relieved actually-but it doesn’t make the heartbreak any easier.

…anyway, since I was supposed to be talking about love and ended up typing about myself, I think that most people in this kind of situation die out early.

It could be the point where they can’t put aside their own feelings and respect the girl’s wishes, or maybe they could not react too well to the rejection. They could even take out their hurt feelings on the wrong people. Just the reaction alone may and probably does compromise the relationship.

...but here’s the good news, love has many variations. Love makes you do stupid things. Love is patient. I’ve seen people in this kind of situation, as well as experienced it myself once earlier in my life: that if you genuinely care about something, love may hurt, but it also heals. I personally enjoy a strengthened friendship with a girl I went through this with prior-because it really helps to be honest with each other and really understanding how important the friendship between the two of us is-even if that person may never love you romantically.

I’m not saying-‘hey, I’m so knowledgeable in this aspect that if you just follow what I’m saying, everything will go great. Getting heartbroken-no big deal.’ WRONG. People don’t ever really get used to heartbreaks, even if it can possibly get easier over time. What I AM saying is that you can choose how the relationship goes after that. Surprisingly, this is applicable for a lot of BGR situations.

Do you really…understand what love is to make that kind of sacrifice? Because you can choose how the relationship goes after that-if you genuinely care about that person’s feelings. It’s not easy for you to confide in her or him your own feelings, but it’s not easy for the other person to reject you honestly and sincerely while emphasizing how important your friendship or current relationship is to them. Even if they don’t reject you politely…well they could NOT reject you, and that would really be a lot worse over time.

As for me, right after I stop typing…well I’m typing because I feel strongly about this issue but also because I know that from the moment I stop typing for a total of about a minute, the pain will start to sink in. And it will hurt. I will probably end up crying, and not getting any real sleep for about a week. Then my basketball would deteriorate to an even worse point than it already is and I would also end up going through a lesser version of the five stages of grief.

I hope nobody misunderstands that I was in actual fact-madly in love with this girl I just wrote about. I just think that maybe I could have.

…typing all that semi-personal stuff is surprisingly healthy. Now if she doesn’t read it, life would be just fine.

I’m going to end this with a quotation that I adore. I hope people will think about this and ponder over it (regardless of how much self-focused it currently is).

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’

In this world, love isn’t perfect. But it is more. So much more.

…anyway I’m really sad, so I’m just going to call it a night.

...God, you just love this, don’t ya?