I love the idea of love. 

For as long as I can remember, love has been something that I have wanted to attain. The illusive feeling of falling head over heels for someone and having a fairytale ending, the kind where you’re so in love your foot pops (just like in “The Princess Diaries”). But being in love in this day in age feels so unattainable, it’s practically a fairytale in itself. 

As a young girl, I fell in love with the movie “The Beauty and The Beast,” from the dresses and talking antiques to the magic of falling in love, I was head over heels for the movie. Our names: Belle and Bella are even similar, so how could I not dream of being Princess Belle? Befriending talking candles and becoming a princess was not the fictional part, instead, falling in love was.

My parents have been separated for what feels like the beginning of time to me, so I never had a true example of what being in a loving relationship looked like. I remember at the start of kindergarten we had to draw a family portrait. Most kids in my class had a portrait of a classic American family: a mom, a dad, a sibling , maybe two or two and a dog to top it off. But mine looked nothing like theirs, I had two different family portraits, one with just me and my mom, and one with my dad and half-siblings. When seeing my friend’s 

parents happily married, I was left with a pestering question: wWhat is love? It was one of my favorite questions to ask as my mom tucked me into bed, “Why is the sky blue?” “What happens if you leave water boiling?” and “What is love?” A question holding so much weight slipped in between questions on the oddities of the world. 

I want to know the answer to the question, “What is love?” Does loving the idea of love just mean you don’t truly know what it is? 

With my generation, I feel as though the idea of love has gotten even more out of reach. The multitude of movies about captivating love stories coupled with the never-ending confusion of high school relationships is a heart-wrenching concoction for hopeless romantics. Movies like “The Notebook” and “10 Things I Hate About You” put the majority of high school relationships to shame. At the start of high school, I would sit with my friends and watch movies like these, and wish for a magical love story, but love isn’t linear.

The kind of love in these movies has always left a hole in me wondering if something like this exists. I think it does, but not in the picture-perfect kiss in rain kind of way, that superficial way of thinking is the idea of love, not actual love. 

I think in some ways the kind of love that is realistic is what fulfills me, and drives me. I no longer chase for the love story of a lifetime. I am content with the actual love that I have found in friendships and family. Love is hard. Love is trust. Love is respect. It is better to have a love that is real rather than have a movie kind of love. Love does not define you.