Love is hard

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I figured that I would take a moment to contemplate the old cliche here today. The truth of the statement "love is hard" is that we really, as humans, do not fully understand what this emotion "love" is. It cannot be scientifically broken down into elements, it cannot be extrapolated from the body, and it isn't the same for any two people on this planet. How are we, as individuals, as complex and complicated as we are, supposed to figure out ways to make love make sense in our lives when we don't even understand ourselves half the time (and love, as we know, involves others in the equation)?

Another scary thing about love is that can control our thoughts and feelings. It has the ability to change our lives in fundamental ways. When we find love, we will do anything to keep it. But sometimes we think it is love and it really is not, so we spend our precious time trying desperately for something that wasn't meant to be. Given my own history, I feel like we go through these experiences to learn something about ourselves, but sometimes I feel like it would have been nice if we could figure that thing out without such heartache and frustration. Is it all worth it in the end when we realize that we've really reached that pot-of-gold at the end of a rainbow of crazy past "practice" relationships?

Love exists not just between couples, but also between family and friends. Love has so many faces and so many challenges, it is hard to keep loving when the world is so distracting, and the movies and tabloids put misconceptions in our heads and lead us to distrust our own feelings. But after all of this, we still come back for more, we continue to pursue love, fall in love, and do crazy things out of and in spite of love.

And that is why love is hard.


And worth it--worth the fights, the sadness, the worrying, and the frustration--for the feeling you get when he or she is holding your hand through the hardest of times.

When he or she is helping you achieve your dreams.

When you realize that there is no one else you'd rather see every morning when you wake up.

When you get past the heartache and the honeymoon, and all you have left is happiness that is as indescribable as the idea of love in the first place.

Don't define it, it doesn't need logic, it just needs faith and trust. Here's to love feeling a bit easier today.