The Use of the Word Love

Six months after I met a young man, he expressed to me

how much he loved me. Being sixteen years old, I thought it

to be very flattering but I could not accept him saying this

to me. The word, love in the romantic sense, is something

that would take so much out of me to say to a person.

Love is something that you express to someone that you

can not, in any way, see living your life without. The last

time I saw the young man who supposedly loved me, was

on my seventeenth birthday when he told me I was a waste

of his time. Love is the strongest emotion and most

powerful word anyone can say to someone else. Some

people use the word love everyday as though it is not as

big of a deal as it really is. Jewel's song, "Always,"

illustrates a definition of love. The first line of the song

totally defines love in the same way I do with, "Please don't

say 'I love you,' those words touch me much too deeply."

With this one line, my entire definition of love is presented.

There are other things people can love: a pet, family

members, certain kinds of food but these are all loved by a

different kind of love. There are millions of ways you can

love, but this kind of love does not happen all the time to a

person. It is the kind of love that is not there at the

beginning, but grows inside you. This kind of love is for

another person that you can not see your life without, even

though at one time it was without that person. To express

this to someone is to propose to commit your life to that

other person. The other person may not feel the same way

and that is why it is hard to accept someone saying that.

One expressing their love to another is the greatest

compliment one could ever receive for they are wanted in

someone else's life forever. There are some people that do

not understand the meaning of love and use it all the time as

though it was just some word that makes people happy.

The young man who told me he loved me also told me a

month later that I was a waste of his time. He is an example

of someone using the word just to make others or even

himself happy. I watched the soap opera, "Sunset Beach,"

and every other character is telling someone else how much

they love them, but they also change who they love on a

weekly basis. I also watched a character ask her husband if

he would just learn to love her. There is no way that

someone could learn to love anyone when love is an

emotion that is already inside a person