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I'm sorry, but I have to say it. If you're a millennial or younger, chances are, you probably don't know how to love. I hate to be an ageist, but our parents, or the generation before them, even with all the constraints that were imposed on them, found a way to make their relationships last. But we're not talking about them today. The problem is with us.
Call me maudlin, or call me melodramatic; but the fact of the matter is, we suck at this shit. Even if I keep aside the fact that we live in a time where we're so pathetic, we look for love (or lust, apparently) on the internet; there are still a million things amiss with the way we feel our feelings. Foundations of trust, faith and unadulterated affection have been replaced by a game of chase, ritualistic blocking-unblocking-blocking patterns and egomania.
People ask me why do I write so much about love. To put it very simply, I'm afraid. Afraid that eventually, I will have to live in a world where love comes and goes oftener than city buses. Where nothing, and nobody knows how to emote. I am terribly afraid of a world which, in addition to being so cruel, will be loveless.
Forgive me for going Neruda on you, but it is very elementary. If you ask what love is to me, I'll tell you it's poison; but it's poison we'd drink every day if made to choose between the sweet bliss of ignorance and it. It's the answer to the puzzle of our numb existence, it's the very manna the soul craves. It's the very thing that you want to live for, and it is the only thing you'd be willing to die for. It is the Universe's ultimate endgame.
I'm not going to tell you how to do it, I haven't figured it out yet either. But, I'm trying. Sure, it is so much easier to give in to the infatuations of a young mind in the prime of its life, and sure, it will be fun. Just, not nearly as satisfying as knowing that the spaces between somebody's fingers were meant only for your hand.
All I'm saying is, don't use distances or careers or any of the thousand other reasons in the call-it-off playbook to end something that should probably never have begun. Hold out for something that will endure the storms of a thousand miles; something that you want to build a career for, not in spite of. Find it, hold on to it, and bask in its light forever.
Love might be overrated, it may well be just another chemical reaction, but damn if it isn't the most beautiful science of the world. It's the most surreal paradox, leaving you full of feelings and at a loss for words; leaving you completely lost, and yet, enchantingly found.