Love is weird.

9/20: That's all I've got for now. Will elaborate later.

9/21: Ok, it's later now, and I'm still kinda struggling to elaborate on what I wanted to say, or why I even said that in the first place. I think I saw a blog prompt at The Daily Post or something that was like "you can love lots of things, talk about it" and the first thing that came to my mind was that it's fucking weird. Weirdy weird weird.

   I mean think about it- is there really any rhyme or reason why we love the things we love? Why certain things make us feel the way we feel about them? I'm sure there's a science to it (pheromones and whatnot, things hardwired into our brain by nature or generations of breeding, etc...), but like, why do we LIKE our Sketchers but LOVE our Prada backpack?* I'm sure there's someone out there who LOVES their Sketchers, ya know? So why do we love the things we love? Really what I'm getting at is, why do we love the people we love?

   I find myself loving people that I cannot explain to others, in relationships to/with people that my friends and/or family simply cannot understand or, sometimes, support. Oftentimes, they're right; sometimes I recognize this in the moment and others, only in hindsight. Sometimes, I can even look them in the face as they explain why it's a bad idea, as I'm balls deep in The Feels for this person, and be like "you're totally 100% correct in everything you're saying about why this is stupid and bad and not worth my time, and for reasons unexplained it is having zero effect on how I feel about this person sooo...please still be my friend when this blows up in my face and you definitely have permission to say 'I told you so.'" 

   Where the fuck am I going with this? Hang on, I need a minute...

   Oh ok. I know what brought this on. So, I have a relationship with someone in my life that means a great deal to me. It's not a romantic relationship, though I do sometimes joke that she's the closest thing I have to a boyfriend right now (not entirely untrue). I regard this person as family. "Friends are the family you choose for yourself" or so they say, and it's so very true with us. This woman is my sister. And damn it if we just do NOT like each other sometimes! We have gone months at a time without speaking, and not having the kindest things to say about each other. I have, on more than one of these occasions, wondered if "this is it", this really was the last fight, the final "breakup".

   Then you get us in a room together and within (a somewhat tense) 20 minutes, we're talking and joking; not entirely back to "normal" at first, mind you, but it's become pretty obvious to me that if we're in the same room, its way easier for us to be friends than not. We've been through a lot, we understand each other in a special way. We may drive each other up a fucking wall sometimes and we know that 72 hours together is pretty much our limit, but at the end of the day she'd take a bullet for me and I'd jump in traffic for her. I really feel like I can rely on and know I am safe with this person, and that's not something I can say about many people.

   But lots of people don't understand our relationship. They've witnessed our fights and breakups, they've seen us both be hurt by one another and watched us continuously gravitate towards one another again. What they don't understand is that our friendship is not standard and it doesn't play by the rules. There are intimate details that give way to a far more nuanced understanding of our relationship to one another (ok, let me make this abundantly clear that none of this is sexual in the even remotest of ways...I realize it's starting to sound a little homoerotic and it's SIMPLY not). I have other friends and family members who raise an eyebrow when they hear we're hanging out and at first, I felt the need to defend myself or our friendship but you know what?

   No. Fuck it. I don't need everyone to understand us. I don't care anymore. I'm done defending this special bond I have with this human. I don't care if anyone understands it, WE understand it. We fight like sisters and we love like sisters, too. If we can't fucking stand each other and don't talk for a few weeks, fine. That SUCKS, supremely, but even if I might not like her at that time, I still love her. We are absolutely partners in crime (sometimes quite literally) and I have no interest in justifying our relationship, dysfunctional as it may be, to anyone. With every fight, every argument, every dark moment we have brings more light to the true nature of our relationship. We understand each other better, we understand how to navigate each other and the friendship- not unlike the evolution of a romantic relationship, minus the romance. I care as much about this person as I do my own siblings, and I think she's just as much of an asshole as they are sometimes, too. That's real love.

Love is weird.

*Name that 90's Teen Movie! I'll give you a hint: it's 10 Things I Hate About You.