Recently, I was asked to define love. Two weeks have passed, and I am no closer to an answer. Old Spanish love songs play in the background as I write. I am a hopeless romantic.

I suppose I’ve been loving for 46 years. Did love begin the moment I left the womb? Was my mami my first love? The one who, by natural law, was meant to teach me? To hold me with tenderness, to care for me, to protect me? To make love my first lesson?

If so, she was my first love, but only for a few months. Then she gave me up. It took thirty years to love her again. And then I let her go. Every day, the resentment fades, the pain dulls, yet I still yearn. Is yearning edged with the sharp knowledge that it’s best to keep her at bay, still love? And did that first experience set me on a path I have yet to understand?

Is love a feeling for something natural, something pure? 

And what of the many I cared for deeply, those I left, those who left me? Where does that feeling go? Does love vanish, or does it simply change form?

One thing I know: love isn’t guaranteed. No one owes you love, and you owe it to no one.

It isn’t all-powerful or weak. If love were all-powerful, wouldn’t the world be a better place? If it were weak, wouldn’t things be worse?

At times, I feel love. 

Sometimes, I see it. Sometimes, I smell it. Sometimes, I hear it.

Lately, I’ve been writing love. I know when I’m writing it because the pen stops, and I catch my breath. Other times, my fingers hover over the keyboard, and I fight back a tear.

Love is constant yet fluid, fleeting yet persistent, demanding yet effortless. Love is everything and nothing, all at once. 

So, to answer your question, I cannot define love. Love defines me.