Love is important. It can be fleeting and yet deep, long-term but yet surprising. Love is the drive you make at 2 am because you need to be near her. Love is the meal you prepare because you want your significant other energized for their day. Love is music that finds you when you need it. Love reveals more about your soul than your mind could ever hope for. Love is joy and love is pain. Love is gain and love can be loss.

Wouldn’t that class have been useful in school? “How To Love” courses with the intention of having more functional relationships. You can teach the fundamentals of trust, loyalty, honesty and respect but would it help? What about when sex enters the equation? What is the balance between being a good friend and a good lover?

It’s not mathematics but it is definitely subject for discussion. Maybe then people would avoid abusive, unfulfilling or all-around dysfunctional relationships more often. Most relationships include a power differential, it can bounce back and forth but ultimately one person often likes to lead.

When you know that the relationship is not right and you’re going to have to end it, how do you handle the love part? How do you handle the attachment that you have to that person? How do you break it? I use my creative outlets mostly to make sense of how I’m feeling about love. A song can tell me more about how I’m feeling than hours of agonizing over a decision, so I put pen to paper more often than not.

I wrote this song two weeks ago, recorded a rough version at home and have been playing it back over the last few days and I feel exceptionally different from when I wrote it. I wrote the track when emotions were heightened and now that things seemed to have settled with that romantic situation I’m surprised I feel so different so quickly. And then there’s other tracks that I put on that just hit in the gut, always. I just played back several tracks and a freestyle and they all had me feelin’ a way. This other one though…

Different relationships bring different volumes of intensity to the table. Just because a situation looks similar to one from your past does not mean that you are going to react the same this time around. You are a new person, and that other person is arguably not the individual from your past. He or she is an entirely new being with facets and quirks that either work for you or don’t. But being true to yourself is the only way to get out of this love thing alive.

There’s also so many different versions of love and styles of relationships to choose from that the traditional model of marriage is not considered the sole pathway to happiness anymore. I’m not sure how I feel on this subject I just know what I would need in a partner to even consider marriage and, truth be told, I haven’t dated a single guy who exhibited those traits. Well, maybe one.

Relationships are meant to teach you lessons, and in the process they can inspire fire music and dope characters for novels. A single muse can inspire great art for decades.

But people are not art, and we have to acknowledge that. People have real feelings, their own dreams, traumas, and obstacles to overcome. Love is not supposed to be used as a weapon to gain one up on someone so that you can feel better about yourself, love is supportive and lacking in judgement. Love is supposed to uplift not put down. I say this because love is possibly one of the most exploited forces in our world.

“I love you.”

When I heard it, I smiled. He meant it. But I simultaneously got bug-eyed and froze…I couldn’t say it back. An “I love you” can give promise of future “I love you’s” and that was something I knew was not in our future. Did I have love for him? Yes. Could I have said it back, sure. But there’s so much power in saying those three small words and meaning them that I couldn’t let them pass my lips.

It feels nice to hear those words, but I can guarantee you it feels even better to be able to say them back once they’re said.

Love is the bedrock of why we do what we do. If you’re lucky enough to fall in love with the right person, say “I love you” and show them that you do. Those words mean something…or maybe I’m just old school like that.