Doug: I Swore I'd never do this.

Dear Readers,

First off, congrats to Sarah on the Miss New Mexico thing, that's too cool for school. Meaning you should drop out of college and become a model. Cause that would be cool, and probably more profitable than helping starving refugees in bora bora.

Now, on to today's topic. Love.

We've all seen people on TV "In Love". These great little packaged romances always start off with the two lovebirds at odds with each other, and in the end they're all over each other. This is TV love. TV Love is fun, easy, simple, and most of all, it always works out in the end.

Everyone wants TV Love.

Well. News flash, that doesn't happen.

Next, We've all seen friends and family in love. I know a couple that has been together for more than five years now. I'm absolutely sure they're in Love. For some people it's like that, they just know, and have always known. But it's not like that for most of us. Another example is your parents. I'm not necessarily talking about your biological parents necessary, but your parental role models. Those people you look up to for advice and comfort.

My folks are happily married, and have been for like, twenty years now. That's kind of cool. My grandparents, Grandma Jeannie and Grandpa Stan, were happily married for well over fifty years, since Grandma Jeannie was 18 and Grandpa Stan just a few years older. My Aunt and Uncle dated in high school, sepeated for college, and then got back together and got married after. They have two kids and are the most successful family I've ever seen. They're locked on. All three of these groups are in Love.

Now here's the kicker. I don't know how they've done it.

As you all may or may not know, I've been in a few serious relationships. I've said, "I love you" to people, and they've said it back. And most importantly, I've believed it. Well, I believed it on one, and was just saying it for the other. I wanted to believe it for the other. Want and do are two different things.

But I wasn't. Or if I was it somehow turned off.

So I'm a little leery of the words. And of relationships in general.

But I'm not here to talk about relationships. I'm here to talk about love. A lot of my friends, people I consider family, are all tied up in this thing right now. Love is either sending them to heights of unimaginable joy, or choking them to death on their own words. This is just how it is. I've decided that to be in Love, is to be in a Hell of your own creation, but to be so thouroughly pleased with your creation that you don't realize it, and you stay in love as long as you are enthralled with the monster you've spawned.

That sounds pretty negative. It is pretty negative, I'll try and define it positively this time:

Love is giving all of yourself, and expecting nothing in return.
Love is the willingness to die, to cease to exist, for those you love, and have no regrets.
Love is screaming, and yelling, and fighting, and misery, but in the end it doesn't matter, because you can't live without that person.
Love is walking when you can't run, crawling when you can't do that, and when you can't do that... the people you love will carry you.
Love is Falling, and Trusting those you Love to catch you.
Love is placing your heart in somone's hand, and trusting, no, knowing, they won't squeeze.
Love is Cruel.
Love is Kind.
Love is...

Undescribable. Beautiful and terrible at the same time. A terrifying glory, a white light that somehow heals and destorys at the same moment. Joy so great it feels as though it might shatter your soul, and despair so wonderful that even in darkness your light shines through.

Dear Reader, if you are in Love, really in love, hold onto it, because this world has a way of taking good things away from people, and no one should just let that happen.

Fight for what you Love, fight until you can't, and then fight some more, because, if you can't do that, you're not really in Love.

-Doug

"Love is a many splendored thing!
Love lifts us up where we belong!
All you need is love!"
-Ewan Mcgregor, Moulin Rouge
"Please don't start that again."
-Nicole Kidman, Moulin Rouge