"Love - noun | \ləv\ (1) : strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties <maternal love for a child> (2) : attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers (3) : affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests <love for his old schoolmates>" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
One of my earliest memories of my childhood comes from when I was somewhere around four years old. My best friend and I staged a play at her house for her parents involving numerous wardrobe changes, fantastic paper props, and some improvised song and dance numbers. The plot? Pretty mixed up and nonsensical (as I think most four-year-olds' theater productions are), but from what I remember it centered around each of us getting married to one twin brother in a set of twins. We staged the whole wedding, from engagement to "you may now kiss the 'bribe,'" to riding off into the sunset on a white horse.
Okay, maybe not that last part, but still.
It seems odd to me now, looking back, that from such a young age, I was preoccupied with the notion of love and relationships. Part of it stems, I think, from the fact that I read a lot as a kid. I found comfort in watching the lives and relationships of characters unfold on the pages of a book. Particularly, I always loved reading books about, well, love. As a young girl, my favorite stories were about princesses falling in love with princes, and even when I got older, the main theme behind the books I read didn't change. There was a (dark) time in middle school where I'd skim through a book until I found a scene where one of the main characters professed his or her love to the other and they'd kiss, then I'd put the book down and return it to the library without finishing the rest, daydreaming about what my life would be like when that happened to me.
Up through the first years of high school, I was in love with the idea of love, even though I had never been in it; especially because I had never been in it. I thought that it was supposed to be exactly like all the movies, TV shows, and books told me: easy, effortless, and perfect. All I saw from the outside were two people who cared deeply about each other and promised 'forever' and 'always.'" I never saw the hard work and difficulties that love can involve. I also never saw that being happy and single was an option; I always felt that seeking a relationship and being in a relationship were the only two acceptable states for an individual to exist in.
Learning that love is not just what I was exposed to in the media -- that it is not always perfect and can be messy or hard -- has been difficult. Over my last few relationships, including one long term, two year high school romance, I've been slowly deconstructing my idealized version of love and who the person I love is supposed to be. In one relationship, I realized that I don't have to agree or like every single part of the person I care about; having differences is normal and okay. In another, I found that I had expectations of what my significant other should do or be in order to express their care about me that didn't line up with their actual expressions of love. In being single for a while, I've found that loving myself takes just as much hard work and dedication as loving another person.
I still tend to idealize love, but I'm slowly getting better. I'm learning that it is not some magical, all-important and all-consuming thing that I have to have or be searching for from other people at all times. I'm falling out of love with the idea of love, so that someday, I can fall into real love again.
