Day Fifteen

There’s a difference between love and being in love. How do you define ‘being in love’? We could say that being in love is to care more about someone than you care about yourself, or anything else, and not just physically, but emotionally and mentally, too. If you're 'in love', you’d let them go if you had to, if it was what they needed to be happy. What most people dislike about love is that the idea that the feeling will go away, or be taken away – that it will end. It’s almost like you’re afraid to be happy and stay in love, because you feel that you should prepare yourself for the day it will all be gone.
Most of us say that it’s normal to pressure yourself away from love, it’s normal to want to seclude yourself and avoid ever being placed in such a situation a second or third time. This is the main reason that those people avoid love, because with each strike, it becomes harder and harder to recover from the pain...

Love comes and goes. Love requires one to put down his or her barriers and to trust someone to be inside of your heart.  It takes a tremendous amount of courage to give someone your heart and trust them with it. Many of us become afraid of putting our heart out there especially if it’s been torn apart in previous relationships.

Many of us become afraid of love because we’re tired of being hurt and we would rather not be hurt again because it takes too much time to get over it. Falling in love can occur quickly, but healing a broken heart almost takes a lifetime. Our hearts will open up extremely quickly to love someone, but the more our hearts are broken, the more difficult it will be to trust someone again. We are afraid of relationships because we don't want to be hurt.

We may be afraid of falling in love again, but we won’t dismiss the possibility. We can’t control when we fall in love because love just happens. Love will sneak up on you when you least expect it. Love is innocent and does not hurt. It only hurts when the one you love takes their love away...

Eventually, we have to get over being afraid. There’s not one person that wants to wake up and find that you’re all alone.  That’s the risk that we take when we choose to love. Maybe we can say that the act of love itself is a risk, but it’s probably one of the only risks in life that everyone is willing to take for a chance at being happy. So, don't be afraid to love.

IQ: "We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy"                                                                               -Walter Anderson-