How to love.

Being as yesterday was Valentines Day, ideas of love are everywhere. 

Proposal stories and pictures are posted on Facebook. Girls are wearing the jewelry their boyfriends bought them. Couples are holding hands. 

It's supposed to be a wonderful holiday, one to celebrate love. But for the people who are single, whata re we celebrating? 

I find that some people celebrated their love for their friends. I myself even got a wonderful present from a wonderful friend yesterday. Some people celebrated their love for their families. Dads drove to colleges to take their daughters out to dinner. And some people didn't celebrate at all. 

For those of us who are single, sometimes it a lot harder to celebrate love when we aren't in it. 

Today, while sitting at school, a group of girls came up to me and asked me a few questions about love, for some survey or something. I allowed them a few minutes and they immediately asked "What is love?"

It brought me back to that wonderful September day that an amazing person once told me the answer. 

Love is a verb. Once you start doing it, you start feeling it. 

They loved that answer. They kept telling me it was the best answer they had heard so far. I wanted to say it wasn't mine, that I had stolen it, but I couldn't bring myself to admit I didn't really believe it anymore.

After they left, I couldn't stop thinking about love. 

Do I really think love is a verb? Yes, you can show love through actions. But is love the action itself? Or is love just a feeling that passes, like it has so many times in my life and in the lives of people all around me?

I started to think about him then. If love was a verb, why did he still tell me he loved me as he walked out the door? He was not showing love at that moment. He was leaving. The words and the action conflicted. 

Throughout our whole relationship, he showed love in extraordinary ways. It was in the thousands of little things he did for me each day that he doesn't even know about. And I tried to show love, too. I know I wasn't very good at it. But I wanted to be so bad. Its just that with all the emotional weight being brought on my shoulders throughout the relationship, it became harder and harder to show love in other actions but to try to hold him up still. So I must have stopped showing it. But I never stopped feeling it. 

But as he walked out that door and told me he loved me, did he love me? Or was he just saying it to make the break easier? 

This morning as I walked to class, I walked by his truck once again. My stuff was gone. 

The other night as I got on Facebook, I realized he had deleted me. 

So as I walked back to my car, I started to put together that he doesn't love me anymore. 

Now, I'm not exactly a complete mess about it. I love him very much, but I suppose it was only a matter of time anyway. 

But while realizing this and trying to accept it, I wanted to cry. There was so much love there, and now its gone. Where did it go? What happened to it? Why did it leave? 

I started to ponder it more. Wondering when he stopped showing love and when he started just saying it. I couldn't place a time. Wanna know why? Because I don't think  he ever did. 

I know its dangerous to tell myself that he still loves me. I don't know if he does, or when he will stop. 

But, while he walked out that door, he was loving me in a way that I couldn't comprehend at that time. If he honestly thought that was the only way, he was leaving for both of us. He was letting me go so I could live a better life. Although I'm going to continue to think he is wrong, maybe that was the only way he knew how to love me at that moment. 

And if I love him, I'd let him go. 

I don't need to be angry at him. I don't need to hold him back. 

Letting go is an action. And verb is an action. Love is a verb. 

Love is letting go. 

"You'll never share your love, until you love yourself, I should know."

Rent speaks it best. 

I need to love myself. 

And if its true, if love is a verb, the only way I'm going to love myself is if I let myself move on. 

I don't exactly know how to do this. But if I'm ever going to love someone else again, I'm going to have to love myself. I need to stop making myself hurt. 

Love is a verb. Now how do I do it after I've been so worn out?