Scattered but interconnected musings about love-

• Ah, yes...the four letter word. On one hand, the bane of my existence. On the other, the very reason and goal of that existence.
• Why is it that I asssociate love with pain, genrally speaking? Looking back, my initial reaction, upon falling for someone, was terror...not happiness, although that was there too, but real, bone shaking fear.
• And it seems a little odd to realize that I could actually love someone without the fear, without even a fragment of it.
• However, it seems to me that our culture, and probably others as well, romanticizes pain associated with love. Indeed, it is almost as though love and happiness in the abscence of pain would be less valid somehow. What a crock of shit!!!!
• It also seems to me that in the media, popular mindset, etc etc....pain is the acid test of love. You love him? (Or her?) Is it hurting? Is he she causing you pain? Yep, must be love. (I am sitting here rolling my eyes, and yet, I too believed this.)
• Also, why is it that love is seen as static and concrete, fixed. It's not. In fact, I think if it were, it'd be dead, that is, cease to exist.
• There is also this idea that it's a limited commodity, that there's only so much to share or to give, and that it has to be jealously guarded. That seems contrary to it's true nature.
• Oh, hell, I don't know. This is all starting to get a little abstract and amorphous for me....but I do know that I've had it with the love=pain and pain=love trip. That just sucks and I don't think it has to be that way.
• See, I *can* learn from my mistakes. I might be the sort who has to *do* to learn, but learn I can. :-)