Have I Ever Been In Love?

Every now and then, I'll hear someone ask a famous actor or a childhood friend: "Have you ever been in love?" And every time I hear their reply, I pause to consider what my answer would be.

Part of me wants to say, no, I haven't been in love. There never was a person in my world that captured my entire heart and made me believe they were the one for me. I have liked people, admired them, enjoyed their presence greatly, yes; but love? No, I think not. Love has escaped me thus far.

Not once have I felt loving feelings without a twinge of doubt, a flicker of skepticism. There is always that stickler of an intuition that says, nope, not this one, either. I can look at a person and see straight back to the end of the tunnel, to the place where the sun shines on the other side, and so far, it has always been the wrong sun. Too hot, perhaps, too bright, a sun that would scald and wither my lily soul; or too dim, maybe, too cold, a sun whose feeble light would never reach me. Maybe some day I will look down an old familiar tunnel and see a new sun. I'm open to that. But that moment has not yet come, and until it does, how could I honestly say that I have been in love?

But then I start to wonder about this conclusion. Because the truth is, I have known love. My heart, guarded with skepticism though it may be, knows nothing else but love within its core. I am a hopeless romantic, really. Every moment of my life is a potential chapter of a love story; every person I meet, a potential object of my adoration. Yes, I have loved people. I have loved them ravishingly, recklessly, completely.

But this is just a way of life for me. I can't half-love anyone or anything. Passion is the key word; quiet, internal passion, but passion. So maybe the question I should be asking myself is, when have I not been in love?

When have I ever been neutral about anything? Either it's all in or all out. When have I ever not wanted the purest and finest out of a situation or a relationship? I'm not looking for surface-level mediocrity, but the deeper things in life.

I don't know. Maybe I have been in love all my life. But I'm in love with life itself. If I am to fall in love with a particular human being, that person will need to stand out from the surrounding universe like a character in a pop-up book. Until then, yes, I have been in love. And at the same time, no, I haven't.