What is love? I don’t believe that there is any one unified answer to this question. It changes from person to person. I have friends who think love is the most important part of life and I have friends who think love is the most ignorant part of human nature. I have found myself in the shoes of both of my friends. I have watched how love has torn people and myself apart, but I have experienced love and am still experiencing love that has made me float through the days and nights with a smile on my face. A real smile.

The first time I told someone other than friends and family that I loved them was my freshman year of high school. My boyfriend at the time had told me that he loved me and I felt obligated to say it back. I broke up with him three days later.

The first time I thought I was in love was my junior year of high school. I was in love with my best friend and I let that control most of my life at that time. I yearned for his affection and I did whatever he told me in the hopes that it might gain me some ground in getting him to love me back. However, it didn’t. I spent much of my junior year pining for him. When I found out he had a girlfriend right around February, I decided I needed to do something to show him he was wrong in dating someone else. He told me I should date this guy he was friends with. I knew the guy a little, I’d talked to him before and he apparently liked me. I accepted my best friend’s advice and dated this guy. By taking his advice, I found myself covered in bruises on my neck and chest from him biting me and having to deal with that thought for the rest of my life.

My first love, my best friend, kept me close to him for a long time after I escaped the grasps of the guy he told me to date before he finally gave in to the idea of dating. I should mention that he only asked me out because he found out I had kissed another guy who actually liked me. As soon as we started dating, my best friend started getting clingy. He hated that I had a job and he hated that I ever spent a day off with anyone other than him. It was with this clinginess that my undying love for him started to fade into the background. I was frustrated with him following me around the hallways at school, I was frustrated with him texting me every second of the day and I was frustrated that my free time was his time, not my own. I dated my best friend for five weeks before I told him I couldn’t do it anymore. I went out to Applebee’s with my friends after. I didn’t even cry.

I thought that this breakup would be the end of the emotional roller coaster I had spent the last year in. I graduated high school and I went off to college. It was the beginning of October of 2012 when I received a text from my best friend (ex-best friend; we didn’t talk anymore) asking if I wanted to hang out. I agreed. It was here that I found myself at the top of the first hill of the roller coaster again.

The next ten months were spent going up and down and around dangerous curves of the roller coaster. I had a boyfriend in the middle of it all (and no, in case anyone is wondering, I did not have contact with this guy while I was with that boyfriend for six weeks). It was the last day of August 2013 that my best friend told me he loved me. It was weird for me. I didn’t know what to do. I said it back because I meant it, or at least I thought I did. I went home that night and lied in bed for a long time. I waited for days for him to text me or call me. He never did. And we never spoke again after that. It wasn't for a long time after that until I was able to be fully functional again. I walked around with a smile on my face and tried to play it off like I was okay. Yet, any time someone asked me if I’d heard from him I went numb. I would wince, my smile would falter and I would shake my head.

It was a year and a half later that I started talking to a guy I’d met online. Everyone around me told me it was an incredibly stupid idea to agree to meet someone I’d never met or spoken to outside of texting. I disagreed. I decided it was time for me to get out of my funk and get back to where I should’ve been. I’m not going to tell you how that first date went. The first date isn’t important anymore. What’s important now is that I have settled into a happy, healthy, life-changing relationship. I don’t have to worry that one day he will tell me he loves me and then disappear from my life. I don’t have to worry that some day one of my friends or family members will see him on the side of the road and be unsure whether or not they should tell me. I don’t have to worry about anything other than the bright future that is standing in front of me. A future with a guy I met online. Love has treated me well these past 16 months. It was given me butterflies in the pits of my stomach, it has given me tears that smear my makeup down my face because of a stupid, insignificant fight and it has given me a hand to hold late at night.

My advice for everyone is that you give love a chance. Even if it has hurt you before. Give it a chance to plant its roots in a new plot of soil. You never know what might grow.