Photo by Vinh Tran
When someone falls in love, the brain releases a whole bunch of chemicals, serotonin, dopamine, you know–that good good. But I’m still not entirely sure how science can bring to reason why people do the things they do for the sake of love. Love makes you vulnerable and puts logic and reasoning outside of thought.
This mess of emotions can do all sorts of things and is completely unpredictable. Love is a disease and it’s an infection that finds itself rampant in the month of February. With this understanding and all the risk behind falling in love, why do I still believe in it?
I’ve fallen in love three times in my life. The first time when my younger brother was born and I knew that I would give everything up for this person whom I literally just met. The second was with my high school girlfriend who I ended up hurting for a solid two years. And I fell in love a third time when I finally found myself and someone found me. This unconditional selflessness that makes normal people do abnormal things is undoubtedly the result of falling in love. I wouldn’t drop every important aspect of my life to make sure someone else is feeling better–but I’d do it out of love.
People show love with a whole number of weird rituals, but to them, it might mean the world for that type of intimacy. It’s their love language. Whether it be gifts or a kiss on the forehead, people have their own little love languages. Isn’t that weird? I pet my little puppy on the head every morning I see her and somewhere in the world, there’s a couple that believes that small gestures like that mean the world to them.
People can also fall out of love and the same people who seem as if they’re inseparable can be total strangers the next day. Love is dangerous and opening yourself to someone can put your mind in jeopardy. This sudden release of good chemicals into your brain will end up making you question why life is worth living. A barrage of self-doubt and hurt towards yourself is all because you allowed yourself to be in love. Some people will swear they’ll never be this open to another person again. They’ll basically cut themselves off from the dangers of falling in love. Who knows, it might end up as a blessing for them. These individuals have been freed from the emotional shackles of having a constant need to feel appreciated.
But to someone like me, someone who understands the instability and uncertainty of falling in love can only just hope they feel different. Love makes me feel like total shit sometimes and it makes me question why I even give it this much effort. But if it means I can make the person I love to smile, I’ll go through it again.
I might be an idiot, I might be the person someone’s been looking for. Truth is, I don’t really know and I don’t care to know the answer. This menace and threat to life itself is love and I’m inviting all its faults in my life. In a year or so I might feel completely different, but I’m hoping that I don’t.
Kindergarten 