My first year of college, when I would call home, my mother had a habit of asking "So... do you have a boyfriend yet?" in every conversation. I never had a boyfriend in high school and, well... college being what it is, she was anticipating my sexual and romantic awakening at any moment. Rather than answer that question semi-daily for 4 years, I promised my mother that I would tell her as soon as I had any boyfriend-related news, and in return, she agreed to stop asking.
Fast-forward 11 years. Just as I'm settling into my grown woman groove, here come the (female) relatives wanting to know where the boyfriend is, and when I'm gonna become a We. I explain my solitary disposition and how my cup of freedom runneth over, but they're not buying it. I'm told that a lack of desire for companionship is, without a doubt, nothing other than a lack of experience in love. To love... to be in love, is to crave the beloved. All day, every day. To eat, sleep, and dream him.
I object, but I'm over-ruled. Love is need. Love is "Everything with you, is better than everything without you." Love is all the time. Not to have felt that way is not to have been in love. And I am She Who Has Yet to Love. Just wait. It'll happen to me one day.
I have stopped objecting, for now. I won't say that I have been in love. I won't say that I have craved and wanted and missed and dreamed of. I won't say that I know the feeling, and that it passes. I will never say that I have loved harder than their in loves. Or that I have melted with my beloveds over miles and time zones. I won't say that Love is deeper than love, deeper than sex, and deeper than sympathy. I won't say that I know what I know.
"... But I know what Love is."
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