Love.

This particular piece of writing was not meant to answer the question: What is love?

Its purpose was to answer the question: What is love like? 

Excerpt from my journal:

I read a quote.

It said, "Falling in love is like handing someone a loaded gun pointed at your heart and trusting them not to pull the trigger."

That contradicted another quote I read.

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just have to find the ones worth suffering for."

So my inference is this.

Loving someone is like willingly giving a gun aimed at your heart to them. People you do not love have to find the gun themselves. Either way, the trigger must be pulled.

It is where they shoot that matters.

Anyone who does not have a heart would not waste time in making another join them.

One who would take sympathy would shoot elsewhere.

One who truly loves you will shoot in a place that minimizes the damage, but still teaches you a lesson.

Or they would shoot you in the heart. Or the head.

Not because they are heartless.

But because they want you to die a quick and painless death.

(End)

I wrote that on February 10th, 2025.

And I've had a lot of time to think since then.

I realized a person has two choices:

To love,

or to not love?

To be alone,

or to not be alone?

Whether you like it or not, independence is a lie.

Interdependence is the truth. It is the way we exist, and neglecting such a crucial part of the essence of our being is ignorance and illiteracy.

So it may not be our choice, but it is our fate should we choose to not love. To be forever alone.

Loneliness.

Love is not limited to just romance. Love is far more expansive than that, far more profound. It is quite a beautiful thing. So beautiful that it hurts.

A quote from one of my favorite books, 'The Fault in Our Stars' (by John Green):

"Surely you know that there are only two emotions, love and fear..."

It's true.

All other emotions are products of these two reactants.

Anger.

Sadness.

Jealousy.

Happiness.

These are all children of the two emotions that serve as the core of our being.

Every decision we make in our lives is either out of fear or out of love, if not both.

Our life is driven by them.

Hence, choosing to completely push love out of our system would be partial suicide - and not in the sweet, 'I won't get to feel any pain' kind of way.

It is partial suicide in the sense that you would cruelly be ripping part of your essence away, while letting the other live.

You would be separating two lovers who could not live without one another.

And then you'll feel the same pain you felt when you chose to love - the pain of your heart being broken.

But it will be worse.

Because you broke the hearts of your core emotions by ripping them apart.

And you broke your essence.

Something choosing to love someone could never have done. Because at least then, your essence was still intact - the lovers that made up your essence were not torn apart.

"

Pick your poison, babe

I'm poison either way

"

- Taylor Swift

Take the bullets with a smile.

It will be better than ruining the love story of your essence.

Tell me, would you prefer a shattered heart or a hollow soul?

We are all destined to die.

Why die with a broken soul when you can simply die with a broken heart instead?

Would you rather die in fear or die in love?

Would you rather die ruined or die hurt?

Pick. Your. Poison.

Swallowing one is inevitable.