7 Truths My High School Students Taught Me About Real Love

1. It is fearless.

Love defies all rules—kissing between locker banks, passing notes during class, making out under the bleachers, texting in the hallways—when you love someone, you aren’t afraid to love blindly, recklessly, and with total disregard to what you’re supposed to do or who you’re supposed to be.

2. It should filter though and fill up every part of your life.

The one you love should be your Friday night, your Saturday afternoon, your after school plans and your prom date. Sure, you should always have room for everyone else that matters, but this person should be connected to the core of who you are—independent but inseparable.

3. It should be passionate.

It should make you glow. It should make you smile. It should make you doodle hearts in the corners of your term papers or carve initials into the side of your desk. Love should bless your life, and that person should make you spark. You should crave them, in so many ways. You should want them, need them, be so filled with passion for your relationship that it is intoxicating.

4. It should defy expectations.

You should love despite the people who shake their heads, wag their fingers, say ‘you’re too young’ or ‘you don’t know what love means’ or ‘you’re being foolish.’ Love should be between you and that person. Only. And it should be about what you feel in your heart rather than what the world tells you.

5. It is incredibly foolish sometimes. And that’s ok.

You might change your plans, change your mind, get in trouble for ditching class because you took your SO on a date, or get grounded because you snuck out to see them…but it’s worth it, isn’t it? It’s worth it to love so fully, so deeply, to make mistakes and learn from them and fall in and fall out and fall down. You might be so so foolish, but love is always worth it.

6. It will hurt. And that’s ok.

The pain is inevitable. The boy that cheated, the Sadie Hawkins’ date that said no, the girl that kissed the Homecoming King behind your back. You will face heartbreak and disappointment, loneliness and loss. But you will learn and you will keep on loving.

7. It is so essential to who we are and why we’re here.

You do homework, you follow the rules (mostly), you spend time at home and out with friends, but all the while you love. Love is in everything we do and a huge part of our existence. It is the music we listen to on the bus ride in the morning, the skip in our step at the end of the day, the first thought after our alarm clock. It makes us and keeps us alive.