Love is one of the funniest things in the world. It is, in my opinion, the most essential aspect of life. Love is what gets us through the day, whether that is coming home to see our long-term partner or simply calling our mom after a rough day and laughing with her even though you were crying a moment ago. Love is what we all seek, even if not actively, and it is what completes us, even though we have to be complete on our own first. In the words of the owners of our beloved local pizzeria, "Love is it."

Love is so weird. There's not really one way to wrap your head around it. People experience it in so many different ways; it is at the same time the most diverse but unifying force in the world. It is the strongest force in the world. Love can make you fly but bring you to your knees, make you smile but make you cry. Love makes you lose your mind, lose yourself a little; it brings out the worst and the best in you and at the end of the day always leave you breathless.

I wish love was easier but there is no way to love without pain. There is no way to love without loss. Because when you love, you surrender everything. You hand yourself over to another person, usually not intentionally. Usually you surrender yourself when you don't even realize it, when you're too far gone to realize it.

You surrender yourself when you fall asleep next to someone, when you're vulnerable next to them, when you realize they can make you laugh like no one else. You surrender yourself when you realize you'd drop anything to be by their side, when you feel yourself falling but know it's too late to do anything about it. You only know love when you know how much it would hurt to lose something.

And sometimes you do lose someone, and it's the worst feeling in the world. It's the worst feeling in the world to not be by their side every day. It's the worst feeling in the world to know that they woke up that day and brushed their teeth and got dressed and made their bed and went about the mundaneness that is life and at the end of the day you weren't there to hear about it. At the end of the day you don't know how their family is doing, or how their dogs are, or what their friends have been up to these days. At the end of the day all you have is the memories that live in the back of your mind.

Usually that pain goes away, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it becomes a part of your everyday, and that's okay. Sometimes you can love someone even though you've lost them, sometimes you can love at a distance because you simply can't not love them at all. Sometimes you can't be with someone and you have to live with that and sometimes it's not the pain of losing them that hurts the most but rather the acceptance of that fact. Pain is the fear of not knowing whether you only really love once.

That's just how strong love is. You can be very okay and feeling fine, but all the sudden love can make you lose all capacities of thinking, all composure you convinced yourself you had. Suddenly your breath is short and your knees buckle and it's hard to stand and you wonder how on earth a psychological emotion could have such a strong physical effect on you.

Love, philosopher Jacques Lacan said, is a triumph over a painful existence. It gives us meaning in a meaningless world. Caring for another and living life from their perspective removes the singularity of our own existence; it opens our eyes to something bigger than ourselves. But in order for love to do that we have to be complete on our own, we have to know who we are so that we don't surrender that in the process of falling in love. We don't give ourselves up for another, we simply open ourselves up to be changed by them.

Love is not one thing, it is all these things. Love is found in so many places other than a lover; it is found in our mothers and in our friends, in the smiles of strangers across the street. Love simply brings us closer to the people co-inhabiting our worlds, it lessons our burden and sets us out with a purpose. Sometimes love looks like loss but in the end it looks like everything you've ever lost come back to you.