What is Love?

They say that love is patient and that love is kind. They say that it is boundless and endless. They say that love is the greatest power in this world. They say that it is the best feeling one could ever experience. They say that it is the love for another that completes one in this world. Yet they fail to inform us the price of this gift, of this power. They fail to inform us the most crucial thing of all: that love is the greatest pain of all. Love is patient, perhaps, but is it truly kind? When love strikes one and not the other, is that truly kind? Is it kind to present one with a gift and not the other? Is it kind to inflict one with something so powerful that they cannot control themselves? Perhaps the kindness is more nuanced than we realise...?
         They say that love is patient and that love is kind... In truth, they say these things of love because it is the one thing that unifies all things as one. Without love we may as well be hollow husks of a species. It is true that love waits patiently to strike us at just the "right" moment, but in reality it strikes us and strikes us at those moments for a reason. We are humbled by it. We learn from it. We discover that we are not alone in this world, after all. We share the pain of others through the gift of love. We hurt so that we can be strengthened. We hurt so that we can be that strength to others whose pain we can understand thanks to the bridge of love.
         The "pangs of despised love" are the worst pain of all. To feel unloved is truly painful, yet there is little at stake if love has not struck those who feel alone. When one has given their heart and soul to another and that other has not received, accepted and acknowledged that love and returned it in the same manner... that is deadly. The cruelest love that strikes most people at least once in their lives is that most feared and hated of all forms of love. That love that powers and drains you all at once both strengthens and weakens. It is the pain of unrequited love.
         I myself have been struck by this love. I have experienced it for 13 years on end before my heart was broken and that love died. Once again I am visited by love and yet I am afraid of discovering the exact nature of my current amorous sojourner. All I know is that this love has struck me suddenly and when I least expected it. When I first experienced love it was a slow and steady process that took many years, yet now I have been subjected to a much more intense sensation within a few months. I am certain of my feelings. I know how I feel and why I feel the way that I feel. His mere presence makes my chest grow tense and tight. My heart races just thinking of him. My mind cannot help but wonder to him at all moments in the day and night. I cannot concentrate without my thoughts escaping to that familiar face and voice. His eyes pierce my soul and so I find it almost impossible to look him in the eye no matter how much I want to. I know there is something profound between us and yet I am afraid of extending my hand to him and revealing the extent of my feelings for him. I remain his loyal friend for the time being, but my yearning is beyond comprehension. He epitomises everything I have ever needed and so I count the days, waiting for that day when our paths no longer intersect, or else he is snatched from my grasp by another. I wait for the day when I will succumb to my desire to tell him exactly how I feel and thus destroy the blissful ignorant state of our current friendship. And so we go on living our lives as though the human race was not governed by such forces as love and fear and hate. And so I go on in silence waiting for that day to come. Which one of the three will it be? That is the question I must now wait for to be answered.