i am always falling love... i'm not worried about it

Love (noun)- a powerful experience in which your heart is able to feel and think beyond the capacity of reason.

i believe that love exceeds the conventional classifactions and man-made boundries in which people catagorize feelings. at times it is both wise and foolish, tragic and inspiring, momentous and remedial. i suppose love is everything and nothing. i'm still considering that.

recently i have been aware of how important love is to me (perhaps this is because i am in love right now). but then i started to wonder--- when am i not in love? since i can recall i have always been falling in love with someone. sometimes it lasts a week or a minute, other times it carries on for years.
should i be worried?

my friend suggested that perhaps i wasn't actually in love at all. based upon the length and level of my feelings i was probably just infatuated. she also contested that i was probably more in love with the idea of love than the actual person itself.

this is bullshit.

also, let me just say that i have never actually understood the concept of infatuation. it has always been my knowledge that being "infatuated" with someone means you THINK you are in love, but you're actually not. infatuation is supposedly just a foolish, fleeting feeling (like love is ever rational). so if being in love is an abstract notion, and it's not tangible, and there is no way to physically prove it to anyone else.... well how is being in love any different than having an infatuaiton?

basically they are both human constructions. if you think you're in love with someone and you feel like your in love with someone, then you obviously are. thinking and feeling is the sum total of what anything is. why do people feel an obligation to certify emotions with some kind of retrospective, self imposed, authenticity? and when did such an illusive and intimate experience aquire so many rules?

i guess the way i see it is a bit more simple--love is love. no matter how many times you've loved before- it's still love. or if you love someone more than they love you in return- it's still love. and whether you only love someone for a few minutes or a few years- it's still love. i think some people go their entire lives honestly believing that the only love out there is the kind that is identical to their own. love is not a mirror.

i think what i like most about love is how it can be the opposite of you. love challenges you to be something and go somewhere you could never have gotten to on your own. some of the most self-actualizing experiences i've ever had were when i was taking a chance in love. this of course is not to say that those experiences were always story book endings. God knows how i have trudged through some epic tradgedies that have left me wrecked and ravaged. i guess it's always been my philosphy that EVERY experience is a possibility. even in times of defeat i celebrate, because i know eventually i will get through it. i will simply brush myself off and move on. why not celebrate this chance at life and strive to grow as much as we possibly can? love and the hope of finding a love that's worth the risk has just always been apart of me since i can remember.

hurry up bergamo!

when it comes to reality i am very much a dreamer. it is instinctual, it just feels right to be this way, it must be in my blood or something. recently i have come to realize that this kind of thinking isn't recognized as practicle. as an adult one is assumed to have what other adults like to call "a plan". as a dreamer (i guess i will keep calling myself this for the sake of convention) my unorthodox ideas of excavating temples in bali and living in a treehouse in thailand for a year hardly qualifiys as a plan. so when faced with the plaguing question of "what are you going to do with your life" by family members who all seem to have the answer for me, i finally begin to understand why they call these times the wonder years. i'm realizing i'm actually not invincible, that time is precious, and that the south pacific is most likely out of the question for my next choice residency. this was truthfully a devistating realization.

sooo with much disdane i elected to grow up. and in my defence let my say, valient were my efforts to refine wonderous kinds of thoughts, to purge my fantasies, and replace them with practicle plans for the future: balancing budgets and schedules and check books. it was a gruesome and exhausitng process that never ever seemed to end. at the end of each day i felt akward and rearranged,like i was a crude mockery of what an adult should be.

now i sorta feel stuck in some kind of limbo. it's like the never talked about grace period of young adulthood- when a young person crosses over that grey fuzzy border into the land of full blown responsibility. and everyone's so proud and now my parents can throw a party and say "my daughter graduated, she has a great job, and a mortgage, and a car payment, and a life sentance of bills and taxes and domestic purgatory" yayyy lets all celebrate.

but i ask you - what's so great about all this responsibility anyway? am i missing something? it's just a bunch of endless tasks ---- don't forget to pay on time, work extra, save every penny, be here, go there, buy this, do that. now a days i have to run from one place to the next, always in such a hurry. gotta beat the traffic, and the lines, and the clock.i miss the stillness of life, the simplicity of it all. i miss the eager imaginations of my childhood. laying in the grass, climbing trees, fighting off pirates, and soaring through the air like an angel. is it a crime to continue feeding such a wild imagination? why can't we still make believe, and skip on side walks, and conceive fantastical happenings for our lives?

in my mind roll waves of romantics- i am plotting a great escape. i should want nothing more than to sell all of my belongings and travel the world, to live like a bohemian queen. i would keep a journal in my pocket and document every fascinating face and life i meet along my way. i want to be an adventurer, to map out only my dreams, and to fall in love many times over. i would paint every secret seascape, shop in foreign markets, and drape myself in brilliant colored fabrics. i could dance with the tahitian natives and welcome the fireflies and let my hair grow wildly long until it tickled my elbows and spiraled around in the air like floating calilly petals.

and yet, in spite of all the idealic liberations this dream world encombers, deep down i know i would miss a home to call my own. i would ache to see my family and to wake up in the familurarity of my own bed.
i suppose growing up is the ability to find a balance in all of this- to embrace maturity and still maintain an innocent heart.

i will have to manage a few more months of adult life until bergamo-where a coming of age truely awaits me.