Love. Love is … ? How would you describe love? I don’t know. How does one go about defining something like love?
There’s the old adage along the lines of, “love is something you know you feel once you’re in it.” Sounds like something you’d find in a fortune cookie, right? Get your My Chemical Romance playlist ready. I’ll try not to make this too much of a bummer.
I remember how fun it was to be a child. Back then, all I worried about was if I had enough time to play with my toys or if my mom would make me chicken nuggets (those dinosaur ones were fire). Why am I bringing up childhood memories right now? Well, as someone who has been in love a couple of times in their life, I feel like love comes down to childhood.
All of the times I have been in love share one thing in common — every single time, I felt like a little kid, and there’s something so beautiful about that. Listen, I do my best. I always try to improve and be the best version of myself. In this new— sometimes poisonous — age, where everyone feels the need to post a picture of the stupidest shit on social media every five seconds, it’s refreshing to feel this way — feel this young. I believe that’s the crux of why love is one of the most sought-after feelings in the world.
Maybe not the single most sought-after feeling, but who knows? I have a good feeling that if you ask a bunch of teenage guys what they want most in life, a good chunk of them would say to be loved. At least, I know a good amount of my friends and personal loved ones would. However, I also know a few people who don’t care about having a girlfriend — hell, most guys would say they’re scared of women. Yeah, I know this column is biased because I’m a straight dude, but, at the end of the day, all I can do is write about my own raw experiences.
This has kind of gone off the deep end, though it’s relevant because I’d say “going off the deep end” is pretty common for love. Many times, love can start in a really awesome and fun way. Love is the most addictive drug out of them all — no interaction of the chemicals in a human brain feels as good as the one made by love. It’s crazy and crazy intoxicating. It can simultaneously make you want to spend the rest of your life with someone while also hating their guts. Toxic much?
What’s even crazier is the people who can’t stand not being in relationships. When I say people, I mean me when I was younger. When I was a kid I wanted a girlfriend so bad, but then I got one. It was fun until it wasn’t. When it ended, it freaking killed me. It took me so long to feel anything that wasn’t just emptiness from not having that person in my life. I knew people who felt the same way I did — both in wanting relationships and feeling broken afterward. How does one even deal with that?
Talking to people is honestly the best way to go when dealing with a breakup. Talk to whoever you can and spend time with friends and family and loved ones. They won’t be able to completely fix you though. When you’re cold and lonely at night, gripping your covers and pillows, you’ll still feel empty. No matter how many rebounds you have or how many distractions you fill every hour of the day with, you’ll still feel like there’s something wrong.
Life without that person you loved is scary. When someone leaves a mark on you, it doesn’t take a night or two to go away — it can take a year or two, or three, or four or sometimes it never does, and that’s alright. Whenever I see young kids wishing they were in a relationship, I tell them all the same thing. Being in love is the hardest thing you can possibly do in life — the risk-to-reward ratio is so high, but, even with all of that, love is still such a special thing. To love someone unconditionally, even when there’s a chance of getting completely shattered over its end, well, that’s the most beautiful thing you can do.
Nicolas Scagnelli is a senior majoring in English.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the views of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the Staff Editorial.