Love is defined as "an intense feeling of deep affection." Everyone knows what love means, everyone thinks that they know what it feels like to really love someone. I didn't know what that meant until a few years ago, when I met my first real love. Back then, I didn't know that I was falling in love. It didn't happen deliberately, I didn't want to fall in love, it just happened. And I think that's how it's supposed to happen, how you're really supposed to fall in love. Slowly, unexpectedly. Falling in love is the easy part, when you are so sure that this person is the person that you're meant the be with. They are the person that you love with your entire being, they are who you want to be with forever. You start to picture the future together, you start to make plans about your life...but one day, unexpectedly, it's over. The love that you thought was supposed to last forever is gone - or maybe not gone, but isn't really there anymore. It becomes a memory, something that you no longer feel, something that you can no longer touch...it's just something that you have to strain to remember every so often.

After losing that, it can be hard to move on. Everyone likes falling in love but no one likes falling out of it. Falling out of love for the first time is scary, it warps how you feel about love. It destroys what you thought love was. Love is supposed to be forever, it's supposed to always be there. When you love someone, they shouldn't hurt you, they shouldn't leave. But people fall out of love for the same reasons that they fall into it. People drift apart, situations change, life gets too difficult. That is just the reality of it. Love is hard to come by and it doesn't always last forever.

Falling out of love changes you, it makes you fearful to ever love someone again. You float along through life wondering if you were wrong the entire time. You criticize yourself, ask yourself if that was really love or if you were just making it all up in your head. You start to tell yourself that you did something wrong...but you didn't. No one does anything wrong with love. Love is natural, love finds you when you least expect it and it only ever stays as long as you need it. When love begins to fade, it isn't because you or anyone else did anything wrong. It isn't because you weren't strong enough or because you weren't trying hard enough. You didn't do anything wrong - it just happened. And you need to just let it happen.

Love isn't something to be afraid of, no matter how many times you have been hurt. I know that the idea of falling out of love is daunting. The fact that someone call fall in love with you for one reason and fall out of you for the exact same reason is beyond terrifying. It hurts to lose someone you love; it hurts more than most of us care to admit. But everything happens for a reason. Not all love is meant to stay, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to keep finding love. You should never push someone away because you are afraid of getting hurt. You should allow yourself to love as much as possible, let other people in, let yourself feel something again.

Open yourself up to love instead of running from it. To be completely cheesy and cliche: the pain you're feeling now cannot compare to the joy that is coming. Oftentimes, you have to suffer a little bit to get to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or something like that. Happiness is just around the corner, you just have to walk a little further to get there.