Valentine's Day

Hello!

I did have a post I was writing, about the start of term, but that has been a work in progress since January, and today is a pretty important day of the year, for couples, anyway. This post will be about love and what it means to me (though I won't be making anguished declarations of love, I'm not that sentimental.)
I've had a good first term back (ironically, it's also the last day of term today!), but it has been very busy. Daddy went away to Africa for a week at the end of January.

Have a good day!

To me, love is impossible to describe with one word. It's invisible, but palpably there. If you see a couple interacting, you can get the feeling of some invisible presence, a burning bonfire of passion and joy. Love is happiness and joy. It's when you're laughing and chatting with friends. It's the contented, relaxed smile you have when you spend time with someone you care about. I imagine it as bright, shining, like a summer's day. Love is trust, faith, loyalty.

Love supercedes everything. When you spend time with someone you love, platonically or romantically, it's wonderful. I feel like 'true' love doesn't exist, as such. There is only unconditional love; anything else is not really love. Love as described in Harry Potter or in fairy tales doesn't quite exist in a way that can be harnessed, but it is still incredibly powerful. Love can cure depression, in some cases. It's practically the only thing, other than time, that heals broken hearts, and love never dies.

Over the last couple of years, in year 10 and year 11, I've felt somewhat bereft of love. I've had friends, inside and outside of school, of course, but I was being badly bullied, by someone I used to think of as a friend. I also had several negative experiences in romantic love. But starting from the Soul Survivor camp I went to in August, I've been healing from those experiences. Sometimes, the relief, the knowledge that I'm not alone, that people outside my family do care about me, almost knocks me over.

And something else I think about love; when somebody performs the ultimate act of love, sacrificing their happiness or wellbeing or even life, there are two ways to honour that sacrifice. The first is to perform it yourself, for somebody you love. It needn't be as drastic as giving your life, though. The second is to live your best life, to be happy.

To finish off, I'm going to write down some famous verses about love.
"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."-Jesus, John 15 verse 13
"To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever."-Dumbledore, at the end of Philosopher's Stone
"There is a room that contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature."-Dumbledore again, speaking of love, at the end of Order of the Phoenix. Edited for clarity.
"True love is the most powerful magic in the world, the only magic powerful enough to break any curse."-Rumpelstiltskin. He's a character in an American TV series, called Once Upon A Time. The basic premise of the show is "What if fairy tale characters were real, and living in the real world?". It's good, but insanely complicated beyond season three.

If you feel like this post is too sentimental, or sappy, then feel free to message me via Messenger to complain. Have a brilliant half-term!