Okay, so now it's time for me to go off on a little tangent. To vent, if you will.
First off, I think it's safe to say that the word "love" is a word that is very easily thrown around, and I tend to think that's it's true meaning has been lost to society.
There are two kinds of love.
The first and most common kind is a Familial love. We love our family, even if they're assholes sometimes. The same goes for our friends. Don't be ashamed. The relationship between someone and their best friends is easily equatable to a healthy sibling relationship. Our best friends are like our brothers. Our sisters. Sometimes we have this love for our teachers, our co-workers, or even our pets. This kind of love is not a "true" love because it comes in varying quantities. Most of you with boyfriends or girlfriends have the highest end of this for that person, which is not insignificant at all, in fact it is healthy and I think generally a good thing to have.
The second kind is very rare, and often not experienced for entire lifetimes. I think it's safe to say that at least seventy percent of people haven't experienced it- even if they think they have. "True" love is the exact polar opposite of true hate (another word thrown around a lot that I think has lost it's meaning). The easiest way to describe it is like having a parent, a child, a sibling, and a best friend all in one person. It is unconditional, and you are willing to go to any lengths in order to preserve it. That person begins to need the other as much as they need food, water and air. Being apart for even just a week or two can begin to cause depression, self doubt, and even sometimes, self loathing. It only comes in one quantity, which is, as I said, unconditional.
Unfortunately for most people lucky or unlucky enough to experience it- it is not always mutual. Because of the rarity of it, it is more than likely that if one person truly loves another, the other might think that they do in return- only for the reality to be that it was a deep familial love. Of course, sometimes that can still work out, and there's nothing wrong with it.
Other times, it can can fall apart, and if and when that happens, it is more than able to break someone.
I'll point out that whomever said "It is better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all" is an asshole. And they never knew what love was.
I've had the misfortune of going through this experience recently, and it sucks. I'm not gonna sit here and bitch and moan over a keyboard to thousands of people I've never met before (or even the small percentage of them that may actually read this) about how all this came to pass, or how shitty everything seems to be right now. But I do want you all to take the time to get what I am putting across to you.
A friend recently told me that popular culture, particularly through the media, teaches us that if a good guy gets the girl, and does all the right things, that it can be made to last- but this just isn't the case. He was right. I just want everyone who reads this that is old enough or just mature enough to understand where I am coming from, to take this to heart. Try to rid yourself of the idealistic perception of love that our society tends to teach us.
I'm not saying that love is bad, or that having a relationship is not worth it, I'm just saying to not let yourself get lost with or without it. I've had the feeling of being utterly destroyed by it, and I don't wish that for anyone. Slowly I'm recovering, and I do think it's possible to find it again with somebody else. But you needn't go looking for it too hard. If it's going to come to you, it will, and if not, then who's to say that you're not better off? I know what it's like to feel like you require companionship, and to the people who feel like that, I especially want to get this message across to.
On a final note, I'd like to give some advice that a friend gave me yesterday that has really helped. Whenever something really sucks, not just in the relationship field, but in life in general- take a step back to look at the really big picture. Bad experiences are something we learn from. They suck at first- sometimes a lot- but then we eventually can go on and (sort of) forget they ever happened- we heal. Not only that, but during a time of immense change like that, it's often easier to enact more changes for yourself for the better. Take advantage of it however you can, so that twenty years later, you'll remember how sucky it was, but you won't be too upset, because afterwords you got shit done.
That's what I plan to do. And I hope anybody who ever faces the same problem remembers this, and that they can do it too.
![Love: An Examination]()
