What is love?

For the past couple weeks I been constantly asking myself what is love and how do we identify it? And I say that because love is not something that we can't see, but we can feel it...

Can we really feel love? Yes, of course we can. Love is most commonly identified when we feel butterflies in the stomach or at least that's what people say. And I think it is true, we as humans do feel butterflies when we really like someone or when we fall in love, but we also feel those butterflies when we are nervous or exited.

So, I think there are different ways of identifying love and there are also different ways of expressing love, the same way that there are different kinds of love. For example, the love we receive from mom and dad is not the same love we receive from our friends, siblings, or our partners (Boyfriend/Girlfriend/Husband/Wife). And also not everyone expresses their love the same way, some people might be really verbal expressing their love, others might like to give gifts or write letters, and some might like to express their love by hugging and kissing. Who knows, we all are different, we all think different, and we all love different.

Now that I have talked about the different types of love and the different ways of expressing it, I go back to the initial question, what is love? I initially thought of love as an idea, yes, I thought love was just an idea, simply a thought that lived in my head, a thought that didn't make me feel anything. Maybe I was I cold-hearted person, that's what people tell me, including my mom HAHA! But that changed when I met this short, beautiful, brown-skin girl (Carmen). She made me realized that love was a lot more than just an idea living in my head because an idea can't put all of our senses to work.

When I started looking at love from a different perspective; it seem like all of my senses were now working better. Why do I say that? Well I'm going to tell y'all a little story. Before meeting Carmen I had eaten tacos uncountable times in hundreds of different places and to be honest I have never been a taco lover, I rather eat enchiladas verdes or a burger; nothing could change my mind, except Carmen. One day I asked her if she wanted something for dinner and she said, "Si, quiero tacos" (Yes, I want tacos). So we went to a taco truck and bought tacos. NO MAMES! (OMG!) that was my reaction after the first bite I gave my taco, man I had never tasted such good tacos. Funny thing is that I had bought tacos on that same truck a lot of times, but tacos had never tasted that good before, so I realize that being with her made my taste for things, not only food, be a lot more sensitive, like just being in her company woke my senses to the maximum, made me enjoy little things a lot more; crazy, I know!!

Same thing happened with all of my other senses; sight, smell, touch, and hearing. All of a sudden I started noticing how beautiful she is, that unique smell of her perfume, the softness of her skin, and the lovely sound of her voice. And that's how I started to identify love on each of my senses. Then I understood that love was something more complex than just an "idea", I mean complex in a good way because love happens in stages; I did not enjoy the first stage that much. She was on my mind 24/7 and that was something new for me, it kind of fucked up my mind a little because I didn't know how to deal with. Carmen being in my mind all day wasn't always a good thing because sometimes I would think about a single thing too much and that would lead me to make stupid scenarios on my head. If you been through this you know what I'm talking about, if not I'm going to explain.

Sometime it can turn into something really stupid; for example, I would always send her a goodnight text and sometimes she wouldn't reply until the next day. At first that got into my head, I started thinking that she didn't want to talk to me anymore, or that she was getting bored of me, or that she was cheating on me. It was bad because after I started thinking about things like that, I couldn't get them off my mind and now I was depressed. And when you I was depressed I didn't want to do anything and I felt like shit all day. I was like that for about 8 months; it was hell. A while after I realize that I was being stupid doubting about her, so I decided to just enjoy her love and that's what I been doing, but I doubt I'm the only person that has been through something like that. My advice is don't overthink to much, 10% is what really is happening and 90% is what we make up in our heads, so don't trip about it just enjoy it because that's what love is all about.

So, that was the first stage, now I think I'm on the second stage where I'm just enjoying it and starting to get to know her even better. But did I answer what love is? Well I think love mainly comes from happiness and happiness is the only emotion that we cannot control, yes you read it right, we can not control happiness. Think of when something makes you happy, you can not control smiling and feeling all hyped; Carmen told me that and I'm glad she did. So I think love is a mix of thing, initially is an idea because it generates in your head, then it translates into your senses until it starts to form part of you.