There’s something to be said for being in love. Something that is not altogether pleasant – but nor is it unpleasant. It just is. But, as Hamlet once said, “There’s the rub.” You can’t understand or clarify the logistics of love because there are no logistics. You’re either in love or you’re not, whether you know it or not. When you’re in love, there are no maybes – no uncertainty – only daunting, beautiful total sureness.

When you love someone, common sense takes a flying leap. They say love is blind, and there’s a reason for that. They say love is beautiful, and it’s true. Love makes you view everything in love-tinted glasses – everything is perfect and wonderful and delightful, even if it isn’t. They say love is pain, and the proverbial ‘they’ has never been more right.

When you love someone, and they hurt you, it’s like being shot with a titanium super bullet and being stabbed by a plethora of razor sharp shrapnel simultaneously. Your heart is on the floor, covered in footprints, your soul is in agonizing limbo, and your brain is splattered on the wall behind you. Everything gains an all-encompassing grayness, and nothing you do or say can make sense of anything. You get lightheaded, and you stumble, and suddenly there’s a ripping pressure, like some big, omniscient, and all too cruel hand has seized this perfect moment to decide to reach in and squeeze everything it touches. Lord Alfred Tennyson said, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” But sometimes, even the greats are wrong. Because when someone doesn’t love you anymore, it is the worst feeling in the world. It is the feeling that becomes your world.

When you love someone, and they do the unthinkable and love you back, there is beauty in the world. Like the Cowardly Lion, you find your courage, and you use it every day in order to be able to love that person. Because love is scary. It creeps in, like a thief in broad daylight, and it steals everything that makes you, you. You become out of touch with the world, and the only thing you can focus on is that person. You swear that life can’t get better, and it can’t. Not at that moment. The Bible says that love is kind. And it is – especially when you know that someone loves you. When you know that someone knows your faults, and loves you because of them. When you know that someone knows and adores your quirks. When you know, that no matter what you do, who you kill, where you wind up, that someone will be right there with you. When you know that you are most certainly not alone. Yes, love is indeed kind.

When you love someone, you are immediately weightless. You’re floating, lighter than air, through the days. With love dripping from your lips and tongue, leaving shining footprints behind you, the world can do no wrong. You feel the urge to help the homeless, comfort the sad, strengthen the weak. You want everyone to be as happy as you are, floating on Cloud Nine. Elbert Hubbard said, “The love we give away is the only love we keep.” You’re amazingly altruistic – except when it comes to other people and your love. Because there shouldn’t be an ‘other people and your love.’ It should just be you and them. But the world doesn’t work like that – your quiet corner of heaven is not impenetrable, and you realize this. And so, you rein in the ugly green beast, and you don’t let it out. But what you do keep out is an eye – always suspicious of other people, wanting what they absolutely cannot have.

When you are in love, you live your life by epiphanies. You suddenly come to realizations you never knew needed to be realized. You realize that you are capable of loving and of being loved. You realize that you are good and can finally see the good in others. You realize that there is something in you, that they saw and recognized as desirable. You realize that you are worthy. And there is no greater feeling than that – not even the ever-changing, sweeping, glorious feeling of love.

Love is an oxymoron. Still, yet at the same time, unstill. Pleasurable, and oh-so painful. Love is a bloodsport, designed to rip, and tear, and wrench your equilibrium from you and force you to fall. Love is needle and thread, sewing, mending – healing – every rip and tear. Love is a patch you put on your life, to cover the gaping hole that you never understood. Franklin Jones said, “Love doesn't make the world go 'round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” Love is the adrenaline that allows you to swan dive off of the point of no return with arms spread wide and a grin on your lips. Love is what gives you the ability to walk away and not look back. Love is what allows you to be yourself and to not stand for anyone wanting any less. Love is a sickness whose only cure is more of the disease. Love is beautiful, and love is kind. Love is an ugly monster, and love is the ultimate pain. Love is a roller coaster that occasionally jerks to a stop. Love is a boiling sea, threatening to overwhelm you with every heave.

Love is a jumbled, disorganized mess – it is glorified, lamented, worshipped, and hated. People try to understand it, to rationalize it, to fix it when it goes wrong. But love is a sentient entity, capable of self-thought, full of reasons but totally without reason. Love just is. And that is why it is what it is.