Love
Love. A word used so powerfully in one sentence yet so lightly in the next. We tell everyone we love them. We tell our family, spouses, and even friends we love them.

“You're crazy,” Jen joked after I told her one of my crazy philosophies.

I threw a stained wet towel from the ice cream at sonic at her as I replied, “You're crazy, but I still love you.”

The next day I went home after the fair and as I was looking at my boyfriend with the only lights in the room coming in through the window forming a glare in his deep brown eyes. I told him I love him. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach and I knew it was real. But I didn't feel that when I told Jen I love her.

So does that mean I really don't love her? Was I just telling her I loved her as a source of apology or could it be that I just love her differently? Just like I love my family differently than my friends. It doesn't mean I love them more or less, I just love them in a different way. I love my friends for the fact that they don't have to stay around, but they still do. They accept me for who I am. My family though is bound by blood. I still love them and they love me, but is it because we have to love each other, or do we choose to? Then there are people that tell people they love them because they think they have to. My ex-boyfriend only wanted from me what every other immature male wanted. I thought I loved him, though now I know I really didn't. Maybe only an infatuation. But I never gave him what he wanted and he stopped having any interest in me. That's not love. Love is unconditional.

Love is an important part of my life. Even if I have a good day at work, I get along with everyone and make a lot of tips, if I go home and I'm alone I don't feel I've had a successful day. If I don't have love what do I have to live for? I don't live for money or possessions. In the end they won't keep me happy. Love will.

Yet when I have somebody to love, I take advantage of it. When my granddad was alive I never took the time to know him. I thought he would be there forever. He's not anymore. So often are the times that I just sit in my room doing anything from reading, drawing, or talking on the phone when I could be spending that time with my mom. As I'm doing this I'm not thinking about when I graduate and move out, when she won't be there everyday like she is now. But I continue to do it.

So since love is so important to me in my daily life, why do I take advantage of it? Why can I not express it enough to the people I really care about the most but I can tell the people that I probably wont know in twenty years that I love them like its nothing? Maybe we're so afraid of losing our love that our best precaution is pretend it doesn't exist where it matters the most.