I know what love feels like and I am happy to say it when it hits me (#4459)

     To say I am in love with someone is a serious statement that gives most humans beings pause to consider just what love is. How does one know if they are in love? We are not given a handbook on what these feelings we have mean when they engulf us. But for the most of my life there has been an abundance of love given toward me from my parents and other family members that the idea of what love is is not totally unknown. I have even fallen in love at times in my life only to find out that that love I thought I felt was more like lust or a deep infatuation. Being in love is unconditional in the most expected and unexpected ways. So if you are not willing to go any extra mile to protect that love then you should question it.
     For the most part of my life I can honestly say that I have not been in love with someone. Not that it was a bad thing but it wasn't a great thing. Being in love is special if even unrequited although the pain of unrequited love is a swift kick in the guts. But life is like that in a lot of ways. If it has a real value it has a degree of inverse reaction to it that is of an equal force. So not connecting while in love is a heartbreak, we endure, move on and then hopefully fall in love again with someone who maybe this time is willing to risk their love with you. So when a time like that happens then the world all of a sudden is a place where magic reigns supreme.
     I can say here that love can hit you when you are young and full of vigor for life or when you are middle aged or of an older age where you are maybe a bit wary but not closed off to the idea. I have lived so far through all of those ages and for me the idea that being in love is possible hasn't changed the degree by which I could feel it. Now I am not talking here about marriages of convenience or out of some desperation. I am talking about love that comes along when you had no idea it was coming and then bam! There it is the beginning of something that has the makings of a companionship that was otherwise unknown and yet miraculous. May we all experience in time some variation of being in love with a story to tell about it.