Dear love,

Dear…maybe that’s not how i should have started this letter to you. There isn’t anything dear about you. I’ve thought about all of the times that we had together, the good, the better, and the depressingly bad and it’s made me realize some things about myself as well as about you. Before I share this epiphany with you, I’d like to give pause and recognize how profound of an impact you’ve had on my life.

Before you, I didn’t realize what the agony of love meant.

Before you, I never understood the depth of emotion that can course through a man’s body enabling him to feel the sheer unadulterated, blind love given to another and better yet received from another.

Before you, I never understood the torment that one experiences when such a luscious love is snatched away from me.

Before you, I never understood the dichotomy of love.

Before you, I never cared to understand these things.

But i digress.

Lately my mind has been wandering and I find that when my mind wanders, invariably, it wanders to you. Surely it couldn’t have been over a dozen years ago when I first met your hypnotic gaze…before you took your all-consuming world and thrust it upon my own? Has it been so long?

You see, before, when I first met your intoxicating charms, you overwhelmed me. You grabbed me by your tangled thorns, enticing me to further entrench myself in your web of wily ways. I had no recourse. I had no option. I was naive. I embraced your warmth without waiting….without hesitation…without thinking things through. Logic seemed to vanish when it came to you, love.

And after I had sipped from the first cup of your love, I was impassioned to sip more. When the cup had run dry, I felt bound to seek it out again. Ah, to surrender to the sweet joy of that drink that consumed me was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

Searching for you proved more difficult that I realized, but it did not deter me from pursuing what I thought was my only course of action. I needed guidance and I found direction to you again. But I was naive and young and with that came the pitfalls of inexperience. I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into and I made many mistakes.

Experience started to shape my path. I started to learn what it was that I was truly seeking instead of blindly stabbing in the dark hoping to get lucky. I started to realize things that did not work for me.

But one of the biggest lessons you taught me was that I cannot change someone else to become the vision of perfection that I want. This could only lead to heartache. In trying to find you, I could not force other people to become you…no, no, that has been a recipe for disaster.

I also learned while searching for you that I must keep my eyes wide open. I cannot blind them to obvious telltale signs that you are not present…no, this is not the way to find you. If I see indications of your absence, I should not continue to look and ignore the obvious.

You see, finding you has become a mission of mine. It’s the relentless pursuit of searching for you. I refuse to believe that you cannot be found and I will continue to search until I’ve finally found you.

You have taught me many lessons through the years. You’ve taught me to open my heart to others to share all that I am so that I can let you into my heart. You’ve taught me to treat others with the kindness that inspires your greatness and then it shall be returned to you. You’ve taught me that the greatest thing in life is to love another and to have that returned to you.

You see, love, though you have managed to escape my grasp for the time being, you have not shattered my will. It is this belief that you exist for everyone that drives me to continue along to search for you.

Ah, love. You have shown both kindness and torment to me. Perhaps it is time to stop thinking about you, love, in such abstractions, but instead to seek you in a more corporeal form.

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