On just another day I was sitting in school, trying to blur out the words being spoken in the monotone voice first period on Monday morning. I was bored senseless and began flipping through my phone, trying my best to find something that could entertain me more than this meaningless lecture. I opened twitter and started scrolling down the page, almost lightning quick until something caught my eye. When I started slowly skimming, I came across a silly cliché picture of a couple “in love,” while they were holding hands and merely 16 years old. I scoffed and rolled my eyes at it, thinking to myself that no one that young could be in love. I tried to think of what it was that made them think they felt so strongly. I personally figured it was because of what they saw in each other physically, considering they were such a fit and attractive couple. This stupid thought kept running through my head all day.
The more I tried to figure it out the more aggravated I got. What if the couple wasn’t attractive? What if they were lumpy with moles and dirty fingernails… would they still be in love? I was shallow for thinking the answer could be anything but yes, but in reality I knew I was making sense. What is love? I couldn’t rattle this stupid question out of my head no matter how hard I shook it. On the bus ride home I started looking at yet another silly picture on Tumblr, stating that once you’ve had feelings for someone for over 4 months, you are in love with them. I quickly thought back to the times I’ve drooled over boys who hardly even glanced at me for months on end, or some of my close guy friends that I’ve always had small feelings towards for years at a time. Did that mean I was in love with them? Had I been in love multiple times and not even been aware of it?
The second the bus came to my stop I rushed into my house and threw all of my books on the counter. I sat down to my mother in the kitchen, and before she had a chance to squeeze in a hello I blurted out, “What is love?” Right away her eyes opened wide with a shock to why I was asking such a serious question. She was especially confused because she knew I didn’t have a boyfriend, and never had a history with one either. I muttered, “… just wondering,” as she scrunched her eyebrows and broke eye contact as if she was trying to find the right words to say. She took a deep breath and tried her best to explain. “’Love is when you’re missing some of your teeth, but you’re not afraid to smile because you know your friends will still love you even though some of you is missing.’ ‘Love is accepting each other despite the flaws and things that irritate the crap out of you.’” She gave me quite a few clichés and quotes she had seen online herself. I told her about the picture I read that stated liking someone for four months meant you loved them, and she just shook her head and grinned. “Love isn’t something you define. It’s like poetry in ways that everyone’s is different and beautiful, and can’t easily be expressed with words alone. You feel it in your stomach, you feel it tingling in your fingers, and you feel its chills that shake your body.” The more she spoke, the more I understood, and wanted to close my eyes and absorb it all. This is the kind of love I wish I could see in a picture, instead of two models masquerading with their fake smiles and perfect poses, trying to simply pull off something as complicated as “love.”