'what is love to you?' : part i

If you read my blog weekly, you'll be aware of a project (of some sort) I started just under a month ago. The response was extraordinary and it was even more humorous, lovely and heart-warming as expected, so thank you for everyone who got involved. Here are the collection of submissions I received, through email and direct messaging from my social media accounts. Also because I'm combining a few I've selected from the book I wrote just over a year ago too, I'm planning on making  different posts this week (Today & Wednesday) with all of the submissions from both the book and online, because they're all just too beautiful not to. The length drastically varies throughout and I can't have any of you getting bored. Enjoy!

'WHAT IS LOVE TO YOU?'

Chicken Nuggets.

I love music more than I love people. It's so deeply a part of me now that I can't imagine life without pursuing it to it's fullest. It saved my life, and the day I decided to devote my life to music was the happiest day of my life, because the day itself was pretty dark but hey. I love music. It makes my heart stop, I can't spend a day apart from it, I love it. I love it. And I will repeat that in my heart until the day I die.

Someone once asked me what love is, and to be fair I didn’t know how to really answer the question at the time so I replied: “it’s when you like somebody and want to spend a whole lotta time with them”. I think today, I’d like to change my answer. I think I understand love a little better. I mean no-one ever knows fully what love is, but we live and learn a little by little, but no-one gets to get too close to fully understanding. So here’s my understanding of love. First things first, we need to understand, Love is not the same for everyone and Love is not a feeling, It’s not something you one day just realise you’re in, it is not a one-time thing or something that happens all the time, it is rare, but also frequent, its beautiful but it’s also destructive. It is long-lasting and also short-lived. Love is unexplainable but what is not unexplainable is the side effects of love. To even begin to understand what is love, you have to understand the irony of it. Did you know, you can never truly touch someone? There’s always an atoms gap between you and anything and everything you touch. Did you know the feeling of butterflies you feel is nothing more than chemicals reacting inside your body? Did you also know that no memory you create, or no words you speak are ever truly yours? It’s all been said before by someone else. Now that you know that, you’re again a little closer to understanding love. As I mentioned before, love is not a feeling, but rather a compilation of feelings, memories, instincts, and fulfilment of needs. Love is the side effect of itself. Love is the infatuation with the little details, the way she fixes your collar or hood when it’s messy, the little-lost freckles dotted around on her back and, the hidden tickle spots you find while holding her. Love is noticing tickle spots you find while holding her. Love is noticing the creases in her hands as you feel her lips pressed to you. Love is feeling the hills of her body beneath your fingers and realising the world is in your grasp. Its when you lay in bed and watch her struggle as she fumbles with her hair while looking through the family photos on your walls and you realise you’ve never found her more attractive in your life, its when you close your eyes, and bury your head in her chest and hold her like a child because you have never felt safer anywhere else. Love is understanding that although you cannot truly touch her to an atomic scale, you can feel her fingertips, as you softly drag your fingers down her hands, pushing, reaching around her waist, to tip toe up and down her spine feeling the trail of goosebumps you leave with every stroke. Love is understanding that although at the end of the day it may all be nothing more than just a few chemicals and not something magical, its finding the magic inside of that. It’s realising that her skin speaks more than her eyes, with every time she gets warmer when you touch her she’s saying she loves you, every time she gets goosebumps when your fingers whisper to her skin, she’s saying she needs you there, every time her skin starts to feel uncomfortable and unforgiving to touch it says in time this too we shall overcome, Its realising that although the magic is nothing more than chemicals, no magician is without its trade, and no magic is without its illusions. Its understanding though there is reason does not mean that magic is any less magical but rather is even more magical because it exists. Love is understanding that memories, no matter how dull, repetitive, or small or words spoken a million times are memories others too have shared, but they do not undermine your own. Your memories were created by you and you alone, they were shared by you and in the moment it was your hands that felt the warm touch of her cheek graze against yours, it was her heartbeat you heard as your head rested on her chest and it was your pulse she felt holding your hand. Your memories where a moment of your beauty or destruction that you allowed, you controlled or contained. That the nature of creating memories although formidable is also beautiful. Competitive to always be challenged, to be creative, to be perfect and fresh, but also forgiving when the effort is put in and Love is understanding the right balance of effort. Love is not only an exchange of kindness but encouragement, understanding and support. It’s giving each other a lift, to progress, and escalate above and beyond personally, mentally and socially. Lastly, Love is understanding, that love itself is finite, Its not about what we do to make it last but rather what we do to make our love too wild for words.

Love is making sure that they are at their happiest before ever thinking about yourself.

C8H11NO2+C10H12N2O+C43H66N12O12S2, that's what love is to me. It's the chemical reaction of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin and nothing more than that.

Thank you for reading,

J. I. Smith x