What really matters in love? Truly?

At the end of the effing day, when it is all said and done — what’s left?

What actually matters?

I keep circling back to this phrase: the full package.
But what does that even mean?

It’s hard to say when there are different types of love.

Love from mother to child.
Love from friend to friend.
Love from person to object.
Love from person to God.
Sibling love.
Romantic love.

You name it…
but what is IT?

Does love have a core?
Are these just branches on the same sprawling tree?

Is it a feeling?
An experience?
An idea?
An act?
An expression?
A combination of these?
A thing which cannot be explained in words?

GAHHH.

Why are we humans so complicated?
Is that part of the fun?

Relationships can be complicated.

When we love, we ache to keep it. We lay claim: my boyfriend, my partner, my person. And in that claiming, fear creeps in. We don’t want to lose them. We don’t want to see them laughing in the corner with someone else. So we make rules. We get jealous. We clutch tight.

Maybe that’s just where we are in our evolution. Still learning. Still human. Still attached.

And still, I wonder: at the core, what is it we really want?
Connection?
Safety?
Something else?

Some say love is a drug. Taste it once, and suddenly you’re hooked. Restless, aching, feening for another hit. You find yourself staring at your phone waiting for that text to come through. One little buzz, that name flashing on your screen and the rush floods in; sharp, fast, like a bump of cocaine.

“I miss you” they say.
You feel high.

But that’s it. No follow up. No change.
You feel low.

Oh, so low.

Sigh.
Hm…


Perhaps there isn’t one neat answer.

Life is too dynamic, too wild, too fluid to be contained by a single defining answer. What may be true today may be false tomorrow. Someone can say “I love you” today and drop you tomorrow. In the wise words of Snoop Dog, “It do be like that sometimes.”

Perhaps love is less of a one size fits all answer but more an art. Perhaps it’s not a thing we can shove into a neat little box slapped with a label that says “love is THIS.” Perhaps it’s more a force that can’t be contained. Perhaps it takes many forms, many names, many flavors, many sounds, many textures, many shapes.

And somehow, all of them different yet all of them true.

What a ride. What a ride.