What is love?

Love is hard to conceptualize.

The type of love I am describing is the one that makes you smile at the sight of them. 

The type of love that gives you butterflies when their thumb caresses your hand, or when they pull you close to their chest and hold you tight. 

Right now that person comes to mind. 

This love can be blinding, it can be confusing. 

Sometimes love can be hard, it can feel overwhelming. Some days you’ll rethink if it's really love, but in all actuality, it is the raw vulnerability to accept the feelings, towards that strong sensation of love, that you are rethinking. 

Love is vulnerable. Lowering those “walls” you put up to protect your feelings and your individuality, brick by brick. Letting someone see you for who you actually are. 

Love gives you tingles at the mention of their name, and a sort of emptiness when you are without them. An irrational sense of jittery happiness washes over you when you see them, and your heart somersaults at every touch. 

Love is seeing things that remind you of them; love is thinking of only them, even when surrounded by people and voices all around you. 

Love is the sacrifices you make for another person to make them happier, to see their smile, to give them that joy.

When you talk to that person, you wish the moment could last forever; you wish they would lean in and press their lips to yours, that contact to keep them close to you.

Loving someone means trusting them with your feelings. In love, they put their happiness before your own, but depend on you to make them happy as well. Happiness in love comes from sharing not only the good, but also the bad. This happiness comes in physical forms: a tender forehead kiss, a light squeeze of their hand, or their head snuggling into you. This happiness comes in the form of action: being a listening ear when they need it, getting them their favorite snack, putting a blanket on them when they spontaneously fall asleep.

Love is a deep desire to give someone else the joy and affection you feel when you see them.

Love is the one unifying word that binds us together as humans.