They call her love.
Everyday you see her. She is this thing, this feeling captured and personified in a woman. The funny thing is, you don’t even know her. She dances in your stomach, flicks at your throat as you try to speak and taps at the backs of your knees at inopportune times.
She comes slithering in, revealing to you the ever-so-tempting forbidden fruit. We all know this feeling.
It is the exact moment where you start to loathe your pulse for claiming you’re still alive; for remembering every awkward moment and every spoiled memory that led to this nostalgia.
But still, love is a privilege. It is a rare find with its fair share of tainted experiences. To say love is a roller-coaster ride might be the understatement of the year. I encourage everyone to endure this self-inflicted pain at least once.
Seek out this mysteriously ambiguous woman. Maybe she holds that missing piece to your life. In my experience, I’ve found that being alone is anything but easy. The happiness from independence is short-lived, a temporary thrill.
I understand that finding your ‘better half’ could be a lost cause, because you must understand yourself before understanding another. But I also consider love a necessity, a stepping-stone on the path to satisfaction, even if it comes in the form of a one-night-stand or a narcissistic fool.
Such emotions are complicated. Some experience it every day through eye contact, whether it’s the girl behind the counter at Starbucks or the boy down the hall in Stadium.
I have a friend that always said, “If I don’t fall in love at least once a day, I consider it a day wasted.” I consider him a man who overdoses on love, but intelligent, because it is one of the healthiest forms of addiction.
Eventually, he found love. She didn’t treat him well, but that’s the “no money back guarantee” aspect of finding her: it’s the willingness to jump out of that plane without knowing your parachute will opens, it’s the courageous ability to cross the steep Howard Franklin Bridge with little-to-no gas. Some make it out alive, some don’t, but at least they can say they lived.
Putting it simple, this girl called “love” could be anywhere.
Not just in public ads or websites like Match.com or Facebook. No, love is your imagination meeting your life expectations: your emotional utopia.
To some, finding love is easy, but maintaining the overwhelming amount of emotions is harder than writing a bestselling novel. Arranging priorities is hard once you introduce love into the mix.
But having a life lacking love or failing to experience such a heart-rending obstacle seems almost worthless.
Because I did not understand life until I danced with love. She was smarter, more experienced and gone before I knew it.
Regardless of the expected outcome, I dare you to find her.
She is both a memory and an experience worth keeping.
Narisa Imprasert can be reached at nimprasert@spartans.ut.edu.