I feel like I kinda know what love is

It's not very exciting. It just sort of... is. I mean, I don't think wanting other people to be happy necessarily comes from loving them. That just comes from caring about someone. But for me it's like when I find all these stupid, pointless little things about a person that I love- anything from mannerisms to things they say a lot, to just little physical things- and I keep getting reminded of them, all the time. I'm not saying people are just a sum of their parts, but maybe they are. People are a sum of their actions and the way they talk and treat other people and yes, how they appear physically. I'm able to evaluate people on all of those, and I think when you find you love more than you hate, that's love.

There's things about all the people I love that I hate, too. But those parts aren't important. Everyone has some qualities in them that probably piss other people off, including me. I think love is about realizing that you don't really care about those because being negative is no fun.

And right now, for me, the people I love, I know I love them, and... I can't say it feels "right", that doesn't sound right (pardon the irony). But it feels... correct, I guess, as mathematical as that sounds. It doesn't feel wrong, or bad. But it's not like this overwhelming rush of emotions. It just is. It's just there. I mean, I suppose love can make people feel an overwhelming rush of emotions (it's like with a pet- you love them, and then when something happens to them you get really scared and emotional and freak out, and everything hurts and is just so wrong. But in the end, if it turns out okay, you're okay too (and perhaps angry if the something that happened to them was someone else's fault- I know my family never went back to one kennel after Sadie stuck her nose through the fence and had it brutally chomped on by this idiot of a german shepherd they had out there- I mean seriously, control your fucking dog), and everything calms down again. Or like at weddings, when people can get so overwhelmed by the idea of loving each other or two other people loving each other that they start crying.

I think maybe that's why it's so easy for people to take people they love for granted, too- because love is like a background emotion. You don't really notice how much of it there is until it spirals out of control.

Anyway, I should get back to work, but first- I realized today that when someone says "it's always in the last place you look"- well of course it is, because you stop looking once you find it, making the place you found it the last place you looked (I don't know if other people already realized this but for me it was equivalent to realizing I could never recite pi backwards). Oh, and what "pardon" means in a legal sense- because above, I said "pardon the irony", like excuse the irony here. Being pardoned is being excused for doing something wrong. This connection literally never occurred to me until like two minutes ago.

yer pal,
swegan :)