Love. The four letter word that causes a vast spectrum of emotion. The word that gives people thought for a better tomorrow or tears down the very platform they stand on. It's the one thing that can leave you feeling full of warmth or empty and cold. Love is the friend that holds you while you cry over the boy that broke your heart. Love is that same boy that caused you pain. Love comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors. And I left it.

When I was much younger, I was full of an unrelenting force typically known as hope. The naïve thought that the world was full of bright sunshine and colorful rainbows held strong in my little, inexperienced heart for years. Love confided itself into my dear friends and wonderful family. Love rode bikes to the neighborhood park with me during the heat of the summer, went Trick-or-Treating with me in silly costumes at Halloween, and opened presents with an overexcited little girl on Christmas. Then it happened. The one moment that shattered my glorious perception of the world I lived in: puberty.

Fast-forward a few years, and I'm in high school. The best way to describe myself in these awkward years was a hot mess. At this point, I have had a couple people claiming to be this love that I used to see in my friends. This version, however, looks different. This love isn't playing Monopoly on the floor with me. This love wanted to hold hands and kiss my forehead. Although my previous love filled my heart with happiness, this new love is filling my whole body with a strange warm and fuzzy feeling. Love now has a new meaning! This love promised it would never leave. And I believed love. Love held true to its promise. Love never left me, but it hurt me. Love had an obsession with causing jealousy. Love liked to push me to my breaking point. So, I left love. I left love over the phone, crying in the band room of my high school, in a crowded Dairy Queen parking lot, stunned in her cramped dorm room, and left aghast in his driveway. I left this kind of love so it would not leave me broken like it had in the past.

Thankfully, I did not get to leave love altogether. Love still manifests itself in my beautiful mother, difficult father, and priceless friends. Love went back to its previous form because I was not ready for its intimidating alternate. But as the age-old saying goes, "Love is patient." When I am ready, I will search for love in people. This time, I will enjoy it for every sense of the word. And I will not leave it.