Love Will Change You

Love will change you.

It will break your heart and remold it. It will take your sense of humor and tear it apart, piecing it back together with jokes from them. It will ravish your mind and replace the thoughts with them in ways you can’t take back. But you know that.

The only thing no one tells you is that love either makes you a better version of yourself, if it brings out the worst in you, that is how you know it’s not love.

And with that knowledge you will learn that true love is fierce.

It is the most beautiful and dangerous force of nature.

It will cause more water to flow from your eyes than hurricanes bring onto shores. It will cause more whirl winds of gasping for breath between kisses and fights and declarations of love than a tornado can twist around. It will shake your world more than an earthquake shakes the coast. It will crash through your life harder and faster than a tsunami wave crashes to shore. And in its wake it will leave more destruction than any other force known to man.

That’s why the powerful fear love, and the strong search for it.

Because without love you are weak, but with it, you are vulnerable.

The strongest people in the world are those who know what is worth fighting for. Somewhere along the way you learn what it means to love. That sometimes it means knowing what battles to lose because that person is worth more than being right. That sometimes you have to know when to admit fault and apologize without pride because not even that can make you hurt them. Sometimes you have to know when to let go because ultimately they’ll be happier. It means trusting them with your whole heart and that’s the hardest part.

Love is learning their favorite foods when they’re happy, sad, and sick. It’s asking how their day was just because you want to know. It means knowing how they broke their arm in kindergarden or what happened to their first car. It means listening to their hopes and dreams and knowing when to help and when to get out of the way and just support them because they need to do it themselves.

Love is a give and take. You give part of yourself away and in return get part of them to replace it. And the greater the love the larger a piece you trade.

In this is how heartbreak comes along. If they leave they rip their love away. Leaving you with a gaping hole that needs to be filled. That piece of their heart still beating along with yours feels foreign and wrong. Their favorite catchphrase catches in your throat and suddenly there are stinging tears in your eyes. Their gifts become things that make that part of them so unavoidable. It replays the memories and happiest moments and your heart replays the ending and you feel your heart shatter a little more. The wall you put up so you could ignore the pain breaks and the ability to hide it escapes out the cracks. Without warning those waters are flowing faster than the rain in a hurricane and the tornado can’t keep up with your gulping breaths between sobs and explanations.

Suddenly the most destructive force in nature has destroyed you.