I must say a word about love. It is life’s only true hope. Only love can create life. Only love can save life. I’ve seen it. Love is that glimmer of sanity in a world of madness. It overcomes your mind, becoming it, contorting it, defying it. Once you’ve met love, coherent thoughts are without value. Every doubt, every logic, every reason is surmounted. Surpassed by wonder. From the constant marvel in your own fortune—in your own existence—so there is little else left to ponder. Anger, anxiety: it all washes away. Down your side, fading into oblivion. But love; love starts as a trickle. An ounce of water gliding down your parched throat. Slowly, slowly it relinquishes your thirst, the buoyancy shimmering inside of you. Inching father and father down, it reaches your core. One taste. That’s all you need. To fully succumb to its beautiful power.

Yet love’s compel is gentle. A lure whispering your name. Tickling your fingertips until you reach farther than you thought possible. Love is that smile. The one that cascades inside you, awakening even your darkest depths. Until there’s nothing else. Reaching that moment where everything is light. Everything is gleaming. And everything else in existence ceases to exist. Within that abyss you float and fall, yet it makes not a difference because you know you’re eternally safe. For love is a castle, guarding your every move. Becoming your thick, strong walls of elegance. You know walls can break. You’ve seen it. But you’ve also seen love and the beauty it brings. And that’s all you need to keep those walls sturdy.

And so you stay strong. Because you know you will be—in the end. It is just the getting there that takes the effort and the toil. You want to believe love is lucid; that it lacks a current, and always flows north. But how can something blind perpetually head towards the right direction. That is just it—it can’t. Even at its best, love is pain. You can love so much, give so much, and feel incredibly so. But even the incredible is never enough. It is selfish to say love is insufficient. But the pine for such euphoria, the need for your other self leaves you longing. Wishing. And always, always missing.

But finding pain in love is submitting yourself to love’s game. It is simple, really. There is only one instruction, yet you like to think it is conniving. You’d like to think there’s some trick, some man behind the curtain creating the illusion. But there is nothing. Just an empty room. With space for you to fill it.