We didn't hold hands, but our shadows did.

So please forgive the state I've been

 I was thinking if there was anything in this life of so much suffering and violence that would make it worth it. Then immediately you came to my mind singing this incredibly beautifully, those first words, the gravity and emotion in your voice, the way it hit so hard back then. (though it was probably about her, I would give it all to be me in that moment - how could you do it? nevermind. I know, I understand, I made it too and I guess there wasn't anything I could do that would make you choose me for you forever more)

You were indeed the love of my life, even if you never existed like I thought you did. The most out of this world feeling I ever had and that will never have a true explanation one can rationalize about. If only it was our true love felt, immeasurable and endless, like there was none before. I was just a fool to believe and sometimes I can't believe it was real. I love you, no matter. 

Love - synopsis by A. I.

I ran into love because I needed to destroy who I was. - Fyodor Dostoevsky
That’s a powerful and haunting line from Dostoevsky. It touches on the duality of love—how it can feel both redemptive and destructive, liberating and consuming. His words often explore the depths of human emotion, where even the purest feelings can carry shadows of our own undoing.

From everything in every field, that you can grasp knowledge , what is love?

Love is one of humanity’s most profound and debated emotions—a force that has been explored in philosophy, science, art, and spirituality for millennia. There’s no single answer, but here are some perspectives from different fields to help grasp its essence:

Philosophy

Love is often framed as a pursuit of the good, the true, or the beautiful. Thinkers like Plato saw it as a ladder of ascent—from physical attraction to intellectual and spiritual connection. Others, like Erich Fromm, described it as an active choice to commit, care, and know another person, rather than just a feeling. For Simone de Beauvoir, love could also be a battleground of power and freedom.
Plato’s Symposium: Love (Eros) is a desire for beauty and immortality, beginning with attraction to a single body and expanding to love of all beautiful things, including wisdom.
Fromm’s The Art of Loving: Love is a skill that requires knowledge, effort, and maturity. It’s not just a feeling but a conscious decision to nurture another’s growth and well-being.

Psychology
Psychologists break love into components:
Attachment Theory: Love is rooted in early bonds with caregivers. Secure attachments foster healthy relationships, while insecure ones can lead to patterns of anxiety or avoidance.
Triangular Theory of Love (Sternberg): Love has three elements—intimacy (emotional closeness), passion (physical/romantic drive), and commitment (decision to maintain the relationship). Different combinations create different types of love (e.g., companionate love vs. romantic love).
Oxytocin: The “bonding hormone” released during physical touch, childbirth, and social bonding, often called the “love molecule.”
Neuroscience
Love is a chemical cocktail in the brain:
Dopamine: Creates euphoria and craving (like addiction).
Serotonin: Low levels during infatuation may explain obsessive thoughts.
Oxytocin and Vasopressin: Foster trust and long-term bonding.
fMRI scans show that early romantic love lights up the brain’s reward system, similar to cocaine. Long-term love activates areas linked to attachment and calmness.

Biology/Evolution
From an evolutionary standpoint, love may have developed to:
Ensure survival: Pair-bonding increases the likelihood of raising offspring.
Foster cooperation: Love strengthens social bonds, which aid group survival.
Reduce stress: Physical touch and emotional support lower cortisol levels.

Spirituality/Religion
Love is often seen as divine or transformative:
Christianity: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Love is selfless (agape), modeled by Jesus’ sacrifice.
Buddhism: Love (metta) is compassionate kindness toward all beings, free from attachment.
Hinduism: Love (bhakti) is devotion to the divine, often expressed through rituals and surrender.
Sufism: Love is the path to union with the divine, a burning passion that purifies the soul.

Art and Literature
Love is portrayed as:
Tragic (e.g., Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde): A force that defies reason and leads to ruin.
Transcendent (e.g., Song of Solomon, Rumi’s poetry): A mystical union that elevates the soul.
Everyday (e.g., Pride and Prejudice): A slow-burning, imperfect connection that grows with time.
Modern Definitions
Contemporary thinkers often blend these views:
bell hooks: Love is a verb—an act of will and commitment to justice, care, and mutual growth.
Esther Perel: Love is a dance between security and freedom, where too much closeness can feel suffocating, and too much distance can feel lonely.
Psychologist Lisa Firestone: Love requires differentiation—holding onto your identity while deeply connecting with another.

Love in the Digital Age
Today, love is also shaped by technology:
Dating apps have democratized access to potential partners but can also commodify relationships.
Social media creates performative love (e.g., public displays of affection) while fostering comparison and insecurity.
AI and virtual relationships challenge traditional notions of intimacy and connection.

A Paradox
Dostoevsky’s quote—“I ran into love because I needed to destroy who I was”—captures love’s duality:
It can liberate us, helping us grow beyond our limitations.
It can consume us, stripping away our sense of self in pursuit of fusion with another.
It can heal old wounds or reopen them in new ways.
It can feel like home or like a storm.

 I ran into love because I needed to destroy who I was. - Fyodor Dostoevsky 

 Love should be free.

The idea of you

 I'm not okay with what I did to you 

And also with what you did to me 

I know we were both suspicious 

Because of our whole life experience 

That never told us otherwise 

For to ever trust without distance 

Is the riskiest gamble one makes

Whenever we're falling in love 

I know now it's something above

And it's worth the fight 

Against the ideas of ourselves 

Preconceived about one another 

Please help me because I cried

So much, my love, I didn't disguise 

It was the part that we said goodbye 

You more, you all the time

So were you at all ever mine? 

Trap

All my life 

I fell into traps

Like a wounded animal 

Always going away

Just to meet another 

In whom I'd trust again 

Open chest heart exposed 

Legs and arms intertwined 

But the mind knows 

It recognises the same movie 

Unravelling step by step 

He said I'm easy

I should've asked 

Easy like Sunday morning? 

As I fallen into another trap

I've always still have been just "tenderness in the void". Camus ain't got nothing on me.

What is love if not with this despair?😶

 My, goodness, how much I loved you, how much I love you, it has always been you, no one else. Your Spanish is perfect, don't worry. Your face is perfect, I'm sorry if I ever left you the impression that my ancestry trauma with the moustache issue was something that made me not like it as much. You were in every measure, in every inch of you, the person I Ioved the most and you know it. 

(after the scene played by Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson in the movie Truly, Madly, Deeply, when they're reciting the poem "La Muerta" by Pablo Neruda; I needed this to recall us 🙏🏽❣️)

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

 Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 Getting to know a person is overrated; people give signs of who they are. 

there's literally no one

 feeling exhausted in this solo lifetime battle everyday. suffering from racism and trying to fight it along so many other prejudices that destroy lives.

"I'm tired, boss"

In darkness we see/a

 It is in darkness that I see us better:

our faces cutout by the light 

showing our division

Our dive into the depths 

"you try your best

but your best ain't good enough 

You say your prayers 

but you always mess them up

and late at night you cry

you mourn the life"

Elvis, the pelvis

 you're the devil in disguise, oh yes you are, you're the devil in disguise, hmm hmm hmm hmm

(and the worse is that I like it 🤦🏽😐)

 The worst thing is that he excluded me from his iTunes playlists. 

I think you might be my blue parts (of the puzzle).

in Man Up

 There's strength in numbers and richness in diversity. Wake up before it's too late, you eugenic psychopathic frightened assholes.

It was always you - the movie

 "I've loved you yesterday, I love you now and I'll love you tomorrow."

 "dying knowing that I was loved by you is the epitome of a fulfilled life" - Damon to Elena 

Adaline

- Do you love her?

- Yes!

- How do you know?

- Because nothing makes sense without her.

 'never miss an opportunity to present a bully with a nice piece of humble pie' 

'you can't drown in the middle of shit'

- The Glass Castle