The truth of it all, is that I love love. I love romance. I love new loves, old loves, shitty loves and great loves. I love writing love letters and traveling around the world for love. I’ve had loves all my life and I haven’t even been alive that long. I can lock eyes with someone and know whether or not they will be a part of my growing diary of lovers. I’ve almost always had someone to love. For being a hopeless romantic, I am actually quite detached from love. I love it, but I don’t need it. Perhaps an avoidant, hopeless romantic is a better phrase. I create love like potting a plant but avoid the after care. I have dozens of dead plants on the balcony and I keep them there because well, I still love them. I keep them because I don’t believe the love for them died, they just look a little different. I imagine my love as candles in a big house. Some will inevitably burn out but I have endless candles and matchbooks at my disposal. So many, that almost anyone can see my house from the highway, practically on fire. I really believe I have had the best loves anyone could ask for. And I’ll probably have at least 20 more.

My first kiss, we shared a birthday. He was so sweet and I broke his heart. He bought me a pair of knock-off Ed Hardy sunglasses. They were hideous but he knew I wanted something Ed Hardy, so I gotta give it to him. As an 8th grader, I thought this was my first love. For that time, it was.

The first person I had sex with was a guy who dealt drugs. This was not a love, but what I did love was the thrill. That’s as good of a love as any. He was short lived and thank god for that. His love I try often to forget, so I am writing it here to be forever eternalized.

Then there was college spanish class love. This was the last love to ever leave me truly heartbroken. That love, I swore I willed into existence. That love made me feel so powerful. I saw that love and I said “That boy is mine” and so he was. That love also made me lie. Lie about myself, my family, my virginity you name it. I would have done anything to keep that love. Perhaps my love took advantage of this, well actually I know he did. That love was old and I was young but we played house together so I avoided most of the freshmen dorm experience (gladly). That love still pops in and out of my life every now and then, and I love him every time, like it was the first time; however, I do not expect any in return and I am finally at peace with this. I was so devastated from this love that it seems almost impossible for anyone else to hurt me. This love told me he would do that. Honest man I guess.

Then, I met a boy in California. His love for me turned into a million dollar business and only him and I really know what that means. That love was birthed from my need to prove. I needed to desperately prove I was lovable and goddamnit I was. So loveable that someone would leave the pretty west coast to spend time in some weird town in Arkansas. I would later learn, love isn’t proven. I don’t feel too bad though, because this love ripped into me when I got a lip tattoo, so it’s still fuck this love.

Next came a girl in college, that I swear changed my concept of love forever. I loved her then, and I love her now. I think I’ll spend my life always mentally returning back to this love. If you know me, you know this love maybe better than all the other loves. I laid on this love in the grass and never felt freer. I held this love as she couldn’t catch her breath; she had no idea I couldn’t catch mine either for a different reason. I can still feel the way she looked at me. I can still hear the way she called for me. I’ll die trying to actualize this love.

Later, I met a guy in Prague out at a bar. We only spent 1 night together yet somehow we ended up long distance dating for almost 2 years. I called him an obscenity in line ordering drinks and looking back, that should have been a red flag that he liked that but I digress. Another medal I was trying to earn from love. My love carried me to all kinds of different meetings points to see this love. Everyone thought I was crazy because I chose this love. Which is actually what I loved, the response, not him sadly. Ultimately this love was a means to an end. The love was enough to carry me to Los Angeles where I then met an real, life changing, earth shattering love.

This love happened on a night in June, a few months into me living in Los Angeles. This love was a deeply romantic and passionate love affair that transcended all forms of thoughtfulness and care and excitement. We fused together so well that we’d laugh at the thought of anyone ever being annoyed with their significant other. This love was everything I wasn’t and I was everything that he wasn’t, and that dynamic consumed us.That was the first half of our love. There aren’t many words to describe it because a love like that really was simple. It was just love. The second half was riddled with disease both literal and metaphorical. That love seemed to go down hill the second we couldn’t agree on what lamps to buy for our fancy apartment that we were so lucky to get. That love tried its best and for that experience I will be eternally grateful. I’m not quite sure how many more loves I’ll have where I try that long to stay. Thank you to that love that made leaving so hard. That love stripped me down into nothingness and from that, a completely new love could finally be realized.

My girl, my true first giddy little love. So much life, so much boldness, so much pride. I felt like I could walk forever with this love as long as I had her hand. This love and I had impulsivity and magic. This love couldn’t have gone on any longer, because ultimately she is a dog and I am a cat. But I hope this love will get a drink with me any Christmas eve that she can. I owe so much to this love.

I fell in love with a girl who lives in Paris. In love is a generous term, but Paris is the city of love so I can’t not include it. This was innocent love. Two lovers on a bridge. This love wrote me poems and I didn’t pay enough attention to this love. It left as fast as it came. There’s something special about a short lived love, that neither of you try to sustain. We were full and we didn’t continue to gorge ourselves.

I was ready for my next love. I had pink hair and wrecked my car a few days into knowing this love. This love doesn’t even know that I love her. We never said it. But she knows. We know because we truly know each other in a way that can’t be described. Mentally, I’m still at the farmers market selling cookies with this love. I’m making this love coffee and this love is on my balcony talking me down from my event anxiety. That love was cut short because well, I think it needed to be. That split took our love in very different directions. But I believe this love will be a part of my life in one way or another.

Love then took me the airport, LAX, to pick up a girl from London. A worldy love affair that was every bit of exciting as it sounds. I didn’t even know this love. But if this love was willing to get on a plane for someone she’d never met, then I knew I desperately had to have this crazy love. This love I’m still coming down from. This love I would have jumped in front of a moving train for. This love was a hot fever dream that I can barely remember because I’m still high. This love was hot and heavy in the beverly hills hotel bathroom. This love was an orange grove nestled next to a free way. This love embodies who I am almost entirely. This love is forever cemented via matching tattoos.

I am 28 years old and I don’t think, I know I have had a lot of loves. And thank God for that right? I will continue to ravenously scour the depths of the earth looking for love. I hope my loves remember me. I hope one day they can recount our love to someone like I am doing now. But mostly, I hope they know it was love. It was all love. That’s all it has ever been. Sometimes with no place to go beyond a blog post, but still love.