Amo

I never understood when my favorite married couple/humans tried to explain to me that they loved everyone as much as they loved each other. This positively did not make any sense to me. How could you love your husband or wife the same as you love your friends or your fellow human beings in general? Isn't romantic love something completely separate and distinct than love for all humanity? I've been thinking about it everyday since they planted the idea in my head. I think I had a breakthrough today.

© angeles peña

When I was wrestling in my head with the way I felt for a certain person and how it seemed absurd to call it love when it was so young and undeveloped, I didn't understand why I wanted to call it love, how it seemed as if it was love I felt for the person, yet it was asinine to call it such after such a short period of time. I kept going back to the fact that I have been telling new friends how much I adore and love them daily, and that didn't seem weird. So what was it that was so forbidding and distinct about this idea of "romantic love" that made it wear a chastity belt until had put in the time to deserve to deflower it?

I have two best friends who recently started dating men, one in which waited almost 6 months to drop the "L" word, and the other who is yet to, because, "it is just too soon." But I don't feel as if it was ever too soon. I think I loved this mystery man and many others for that fact, immediately. Maybe it's different, maybe a lot is to be said of love that has aged properly, but for now, I'm quite comfortable asserting that I'm in love. Not with one certain person, but with many, many things, and I don't believe that I should not be able to proclaim that simply because it isn't "kosher" to admit to deep feelings before you have been through any certain type of process or time limit. Differences in love are distinctions we create to help us organize our thoughts and understand relationships and emotions. If you break them down to raw inclinations and feelings, they aren't quite so different after all.

I'm in love.