What is the Love?

Photography by Jorge Bustamante

    I wrote the re-definition of the concept of love a year ago, it took me so long to age there and I can't tell how much I fight it. I am the quintessential romantic, the type of girl that keeps Disney Love Movies Industry on their feet because I am always dreaming of the perfect and everlasting love image they sell us. In fact, the "and they lived together forever after" at the end of silly stories about princesses and the blue prince was something deeply buried in the deepest of my heart. 

    My psychoanalyst had a lot to do with me having the guts to go against my own ideology about love... because in this crazy mind of mine, travelling the world for your beloved one, giving up on everything you know for your beloved one, putting aside your pride for your beloved one, making ridiculous vows to your beloved one and promising eternal love despite adversities of any kind (which includes this person not loving you anymore, or even not having ever loved you) made sense, this Romeo and Julieta story where love doesn't know impossible was rooted in my heart and oh God, how hard it was to make it more realistic! Even now I can't completely say my "renewed" concept of love is truly stick to reality, all I know it sounds like a more "logic" definition, even if I am not sure about me being able to connect or mix logic with love actually. Then this is what I got about love a year ago:

“Love is not everlasting by itself... But love exists. Still it's me the one making it forever and true, but I only make it true and forever if it's worthy; and it is worthy only if the other person respects me, gives me security and the life I feel I deserve, in summary if the person loves me back. Love is not forever by nature, feelings are changeable naturally. Then when it comes to LOVE, I CAN make it forever JUST if it's worthy; but at the end, Love Does Exists.” (Bustamante, 2017)

    And for me to get there I had to talk with friends and non-friends, I talked with people I know and people I don't know, I talked with adults and young people, I even talked with taxi drivers I literally saw once in my life! I talked about it with any human being that gave me the chance to talk about it. I almost lost my "faith" in love... It was incredibly traumatic, because Love means so much to me, even if I am a complete chaos when in love, even if many times my words don't go hand to hand with my actions, even if I suck at it, love means so much to me, love is sacred. 

    

    Redefining love was hard for me, even if the change was "slight", it took me an extraordinary amount of temperance and hitting my head over and over again, cry wildly because it just could not be possible that "love is not forever within itself!" People were wrong and, of course, I was so right... and if it was as people said and not as I thought then: Love Does NOT Exist. A dear friend of mine took a few minutes to explain it to me and, miraculously, I understood! It entered in this stubborn head of mine, and I don't know if it was me finally opening up my mind, or her sincere esteem for me and her wishes for me to be emotionally fine, that melt the substance blocking my eyes from the truth. I couldn't be more thankful for letting me see that Love Exists, maybe not with all the characteristic once I gave it, but as it does; and this crazy heart of mine would have to re-learn it. And to re-learn is good, sometimes it is even necessary... I don't believe love is an illness as many do, I don't believe it is something you have to get cured of, I don't believe it is something bad even when it has hurt me deeply and let me huge wounds, even if at times I seem a "Love Skeptical"; I keep on believing love is something beautiful even if painful at times and I wish you people keep on believing in love as well.

    

    I was a bit hesitant about writing something regarding this, it is very personal; and lately, I don't have the luxury to spend some spare time writing about my thoughts and philosophising as much as I would like to, but as I got a reminder about this re-definition of mine of this concept, and I thought about all the people struggling and going through the same hardship I went through years ago and I believed worthy made some time in my agenda to write this and let other romantic ones know this "discovery" of mine, waiting for having light up a little bit the darkened road of some of my peers; because if even one person gets to read this and felt some peace of mind, I would feel the time I took for this wasn't in vain. I would like to end this by quoting an interesting quote of one of my favorite writers so that you guys can have something else to think about even after finishing this reading:

“Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence.” 

― Virginia Woolf, Orlando