What is Love?

And, if your brain didn’t just jump to “Baby, don’t hurt me,” then we cannot be friends.

More to the point; I don’t think I’ll ever find love.

Before you get too worried; this isn’t some desperate, attention-seeking post from another twenty-something whining about her love life.

It’s more existential than that. I mean, give me a little credit.

I just mean that I don’t really understand how anyone finds love. It’s one of those things that is so odd and unlikely that we just sort of accept as reality because we can’t explain it. Like the fact that we’re all here right now. Or the fact that dinosaurs existed. Or, oh I don’t know, gravity? I lost my simile along the way there, but the point is the idea of love doesn’t make any semblance of sense.

And I mean, any kind of love.

Take families for instance. You love them because they’re related to you and you’re supposed to, but do you even really like the people in your family? Like, be honest. Would you choose to hang out with every single person who shares a drop of your DNA if they didn’t? I can’t honestly say that I would. I can honestly say that I’m going to regret that last line as soon as I get a Facebook message from a family member asking me if I was referring to them.

I digress.

This love thing is really irksome because it’s something that has been written about in pretty much every genre and medium on earth and it’s supposedly a shared experience for all of humankind.

But, how is it even a thing?

How do you look at a person and think, “Yes, I love them.” When did you decide this? Was it something that person did or said that made you feel that way? When was the moment that you realized that this feeling existed?

Every time this question has been asked, at least in my experience, the answer is simply: “I don’t know. I just feel it.”

But, what is it? What does it feel like? Is it attraction? Is it friendship? Loyalty? Some sort of weird amalgam? Do you actually feel it, or are you just acting according to some prescribed motion of what love should feel like and look like? If you can’t define what “it” is, then how do you know you feel it?

I know this is one of those times where I’m overanalyzing something that doesn’t need to be analyzed at all. When I do this with other things, people tell me, “Alyssa, just accept that it’s a thing and move on. You’re going to drive yourself insane.”

Well, yes anonymous people, this is driving me insane. I can’t just accept it. I need to understand it. I can’t just move on. I need to know.