"All my little plans and schemes, lost like some forgotten dream, seems like all I really was doing, was waiting for you."-Unknown
When do you become aware of the fact that you are truly in love? Does it simply dawn on you one day while you gaze into their eyes? Or does it slowly creep up on you in the midst of everything else conspiring around and within you? Honestly, I don’t believe anyone can ever truly tell you how it will happen, or what this emotion we believe to be called “love” will really feel like. I don’t claim to be an expert on this subject. Frankly, I’m in just about the worst place this “love” could have led me. But I do know a thing or two about it, and after traveling upon the up and downward spirals of this emotion and everything it entails, I believe that I have some knowledge to share.
First of all, love isn’t something that happens in a day. It may seem this way, but love is, in fact, something which is built in a lifetime. You see, you never stop changing, nor do your emotions towards others. You may love someone after awhile, you may even spend years with them. But your love never ceases to change, to grow, to form and to mold. Maybe at first your love for this counterpart that you have found is childish and free. Or maybe it is slow in coming to be, and you spend the first little while letting them tear down your walls, brick by brick to prove to you that they are truly willing to work to show you how they care. But somehow, sometime, this love of yours will develop into something entirely different. Maybe at first you are entirely physical, all over each other all of the time. Let’s be honest here, most people are when they feel that they love someone. But maybe after awhile, you calm down and feel more comfortable with just being with each other in the same room spending time with one another. Or maybe, in the beginning you took your physical relationship slow, making this person show you that they aren’t entirely about their hormones, and truly care about who you are. But maybe, as your relationship grows and you become more comfortable with your emotional relationship with this person, you let them be more physical with you. Believe you me, every relationship is entirely different. This does not make any “better” than another for any concrete or easily measured reasons. It’s all in how you feel. It’s about taking the reins and riding upon the waves that peak deep within your heart and your soul.
Some love is incredibly easy to define, some incredibly difficult. There is no definite way to come to the conclusion that one is in love. Love is something that has never been entirely described, and something which is monumentally diverse to each individual. So instead of attempting to preach some bullshit theory to you about the signs of this emotion, I’m simply going to tell you how I knew I was in love with the one girl I have ever truly, immeasurably and perpetually loved;
I met her online on the evening of my sixteenth birthday. She was the only person to make it a point to wish me a happy one, and it meant the world to me. I’ve always been quite shy about telling people this, because no one can ever entirely grasp the validity of our love with the knowledge of our meeting in such a way. But nonetheless, it seemed almost unreal from the beginning. We spoke on the telephone every night. I told her I’d take her along when I toured, and that we’d be together soon. A month went by, and I was terrified of the emotions I felt in my heart. I knew I loved her, and I told her this for the first time on my little brother’s birthday. I wanted more than anything to be with her. She was everything I wanted. She was beautiful, absolutely stunning. She called me, she told me all of the things she saw in me and made me feel as if I meant something to the world. She was an amazing girl. She ran an organization entirely built upon the goal to make others smile, she had a passion for horses that was unparalleled. She opened up to me, and for once in my life, I felt I could open up to someone else with her. She made me feel alive and I feel hard for her fast. We started to talk on webcam fairly frequently, and then we didn’t talk for a week or two. I couldn’t tell you the exact length of this period, other than that it was after the tenth of October, and it ended on the thirty first of that same month. You see, I was a drug addict and an alcoholic, and I was terrified of the truth. I was terrified of life without substance, and this new love I had found. So I drowned my self in toxins and tried to hide it all. I believed her to be with someone else for a time. She had been talking about this guy she’d met, and I guess it was only because she thought I didn’t truly feel the way I said I did. But on Halloween, she called me crying. I was more drunk than you could imagine, higher than you could believe, but I remember this single event like it’s still happening. It was like her tears sobered me up. She told me that all of this time we had been talking she had loved me and wanted to be with me, but that she was afraid that I did not feel the same. She told me that my addictions hurt her. That every time she heard that hint of insobriety in my voice, it was painful to her. She knew what I was hiding behind the alcohol. She knew my pain and she was willing to shoulder it if that was what it took to love me. I awoke the next morning and haven’t drank since. Fifteen days later, at five fifteen A.M., we made our relationship official. I could no longer avoid my feelings for this girl that had loved me enough to call me crying. This woman that only wanted to be my happiness. And she was. I wanted only to give her nothing short of my universe. I fell deeper for her every single day, and we spoke of our future together often. When my parents separated, she traveled eight miles shy of six hundred and fifty to help me move. We were inseparable. She was my best friend and the love of my life. She begged her parents to move to Washington from Northern California, and they agreed. Though in the end, when I could no longer endure life beneath my mother’s roof, it was I who made the journey to her. We lived together in her parents’ home for a time. And it was the way she rolled over deeper into my arms when she awoke that made me realize I truly loved her. It was the way she was so protective of me, and always stubborn about what I ate, always making sure that I ate nothing I was allergic to. Always worried I would. It was the way she walked, always slightly crooked, yet perfect in the same instance. It was the way she followed me when I left the house upset in the middle of the night, and the way she worried so often about what would happen to me if my mother was aware of where I was. It was the routine we kept each and every day. I would wake her up, and then cook breakfast while she showered. We would then share breakfast before she went off to school. I would then take her lunch, and later pick her up from school. Then we would spend the rest of the night in each other’s arms. It didn’t matter where we went. It was simply the fact that we were together. We shared everything, down to our one plate of food and the twin-sized bed with a single blanket and only one pillow we both slept in. It was the twinkle in her eyes when I told her that I loved her, and the fire which occupied the same space when she was upset. It was her graceful clumsiness that always had me marveling, or catching her. It was the way she looked upon a horse, or the way she looked anywhere for that matter. It was simply her. It was simply the way I felt every single time I was around her, and the way I ached when I wasn’t. One day, the police caught up with me, and I was taken away. We’d known I had to leave all of that day, and had spent the majority of it out at her cousin’s ranch. I watched her ride for the last time, we cried in each others’ arms and swore to make it work once I was gone. I’d be back soon. Eventually, the police showed up and took me to Mary Graham hall. They decided to put me on a train to Seattle that night. She brought a select few things of mine to the train station, and we had about twenty minutes to say goodbye. I gave her my sweater and kissed her goodbye before I stepped up onto the train to Sacramento. There I would need to buy a ticket to Seattle. The Stockton Police Department would be checking that I was on this train. But, when I arrived in Sacramento I was short of a ticket by quite a lot. I somehow managed to secure myself a ticket, and I cried on and off for the duration of the approximately thirty hour journey. I loved this girl more than anything, and had given everything for her. I had dropped everything to run to her. This was true love, but I was terrified. I knew she was torn by my departure, much like I was, and I wasn’t sure how she would handle it. After my arrival in Seattle, she became more and more withdrawn and I became more and more depressed. I started smoking cigarettes again, and she resumed her old drinking habits. She left me not long after her birthday, which I missed by only four days. Over the next couple months she still showed me signs that she loved me, even telling me flat out on occasion, but she never did want to talk about us for very long. I, on the other hand, am reminded of her each and every day. She’s in everything that I do. She’s in the songs I struggle to write now that she’s gone. She’s in the moments that remind me of times we had. She’s in the songs I hear on the radio, the words that come out of peoples’ mouths.
You see, love is not always an easy or pleasant thing, and it often hurts more than it heals. But the trials of love’s often terrible embrace are the only times in which we can be truly convinced of how we truly love someone. It’s when you ache and it stings. It’s when you cry every day, but yet keep fighting through it all. Because you know, though the situation is hard, and times may be stressful, you love this person. And they love you too.
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