a late post in lieu of Valentine's day.

Compared to the North American teenage norm, I guess it took me relatively long to fall in love. I remember that not knowing what love felt like was something that felt very present to me. Strange how sometimes the absence of something can fill an entire space. It was a concern of mine that I would never find love or really love someone. I felt a bit incapable with how long it was taking me - honestly thought it might never happen. I thought that I needed something huge to happen in order to love someone. Perhaps they would save my life or some other equally grand gesture before a light would go off in my head and I would finally just get it. "Aha! I am in love!"

Being in love seemed something very daunting before. The trademark, for me, was being completely selfless and giving up pieces of myself for the better of another person. That's how I was going to know that I was in love. And that's a huge feat in my books. I'm not a selfish person by any means, and I get a kick out of being selfless and giving towards my friends, but I see the two acts differently. Being generous towards my friends is something that I impart onto them out of my own free will. My imaginings of being in love involved being selfless almost without my willing, being selfless because I couldn't help myself, because I wanted good things for this other person so much that it was beyond my control to prevent them from having power over me.

There are things about love you will never be able to explain to someone who has never been in love. I now understand this to be the absolute truth. Not because the way you feel is inconceivable, but because we can all only learn from experience, not example. If I hadn't learned my lessons the hard way the first time I loved, I don't think I would appreciate how wonderful the second time is right now.

The first time I loved, it took me by surprise, but my instincts were correct. I realized when I felt selflessly for this person and it gave me so much joy to give and give and give for this boy. He didn't love me, but as a naive first lover I didn't think it was a problem. I felt that so long as I loved him, my selflessness would sustain my love for him and I would carry the way I felt about him in my heart forever. What I didn't expect was how integral he felt to me. I knew I could survive without him, but I felt like I couldn't be happy without him. I felt as though so long as I knew he existed in the world, I could never be happy with anyone else. This was obviously a hyperbole and grossly untrue. But when you never knew you could feel that way about someone, coupled by the fact that I had serious doubts about whether I ever could feel that way about someone, the joy, relief and pride I felt for myself was awesome to me. I loved that I loved. Even when my heart was broken in the end and I was left, I loved that I loved. I loved that I could love.

The second time I loved, the love I have right now, is all the more special because of my first love. I was foolish to think that I could love on my own and that I would be able to keep loving someone on the strength of my will alone. A love that is not reciprocated, and is not nourished, cannot grow. And a love that doesn't grow is not really love at all. Two people don't remain static beings. We learn, we change, and we grow in so many ways every single day. Every day I make the choice to love someone, the choice to love who that someone is today and not who they were yesterday. And I don't mean that I can turn love on and off like a switch, but every single day I wake up and make the choice to keep working at my love. Some days it's easy, and some days it's the hardest thing I've ever done. But above all I know it's the strongest and most honest thing I'll ever do, which is the reason I'll keep trying to do it.

My marker for love is still selflessness. But my marker now for a love that is worth nourishing, worth working at, and worth the continuous daily effort, is being offered that selflessness in return. It was one thing to know what loving someone was, to know what giving your whole heart feels like, but giving your heart and getting one in return - now that is a whole different ball game. And what a game it is! What a wonderful, terrifying and exciting game it is! To have that surety that someone will meet you halfway, take care of you when you are down, and always say it back is the most wonderful feeling. It is somehow as magical as I imagined it being, while also feeling so very grounded.

I have learned that although love does involve being so very selfless and giving up control of yourself, love worth the time, effort, and energy, involves someone returning all those thing to you. I know now that my first love didn't deserve all that I had to give. But my love now takes everything I've got and returns it to me ten-fold. I was so glad I found myself capable of love, but I have learned that it is nothing compared to the utter joy of being loved in return. And although this is a lesson I would love to impart, I would never deprive anyone of the complete blessing it is to learn it on their own.

or I will be anyway.

I am a terribly uninteresting, hopelessly unattractive, blindly skeptic, incredibly mediocre, law school reject.

"A few times in my life, I've had moments of clarity - where the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think."

I am very hard pressed to find someone, that I don't know personally, who has inspired me in as large a capacity as Tom Ford has. I could go on and on with the typical accolades - he's a creative genius, excelling in every field he graces with his toes, and is always on the forefront of fashion. Ford doesn't foresee trends; he creates them. You don't want what he's got because he created what you want; you want what he created because when you see what he's got, you discover that you need what you didn't even know before to want. Ford is globally recognized, revered by his peers, and worshiped by millions - myself included.

Tom Ford has influenced my life in ways that I often don't realize until later - sometimes much later. I remember the first time I saw Tom Ford for Yves Saint Laurent's print ad for their fragrance, Opium. I was about ten-years-old and flipping through one of my mom's copies of American Vogue, not really understanding fashion or really seeing what I was looking at (I pursued art as an all-encompassing entity, I hadn't yet comprehended it in application). My eyes glossed over page after page, flipping just fast enough to catch the gist of the images and never reading a word, until I stopped and stared at the page before me wide-eyed. Right there, sitting in my hands, was a picture of model Sophie Dahl lying down, pale as a sheet, wearing studded stilettos and an extravagant necklace - completely naked.

I remember thinking, "Can people do that?" Can people put naked pictures of girls in magazines? Can this girl really be paid for this? Is this okay? Is this an acceptable thing to be doing?

I'm unsure of the reason for my reaction. Maybe it was my age, but I'm more inclined to believe it was the time. What I think many people fail to realize about the genius of Tom Ford is that his success and his story is not just about aesthetics or his intuitiveness when it comes to style and fashion. Ford revolutionized fashion in this way that cannot be retracted. He pushed the envelope past the point of no return and fortunately received bountiful returns for his insight. Advertising was pushed to a whole new level now. And in typical Tom Ford fashion, Tom Ford doesn't just demand your attention. He captures it, bounds it, pleasures it, and has you screaming for more before you can even say Stockholm syndrome.

Tom Ford made me realize that things are possible beyond what you think are the limits of your imagination. He shows me that when you push as hard as you can, you can still push harder. There is always something new and enticing just lying in the wake to be created. Always created; never discovered. He taught me that when you have nothing, sometimes that's even better than having everything. You stand on the threshold of infinite possibilities, infinite building, and infinite growth.

I hate to think this is true, but it if motivates -

These are our glory days.
We are young, we are alive, and we can make this moment exactly everything we want it to be.
Make of it what you will. Will everything you can.

This is going to be personal and a little overwrought with emotion, but I feel the need to write -

Is it bad if I feel overwhelmed because so many positive things are happening today, but I don't know how to properly feel happy about them?

People have been so complimentary today, incredibly kind and things have been going my way pretty much since I've gotten up this morning. And I feel like I should be over the moon, but I don't know how to be. If I feel, I feel overwhelmed. And if I try to calm myself down, I feel like it's all white noise. It's all blunted and it feels wrong. It feels wrong to not be ecstatic, elated, or at the very least grateful, that my day is going this well.

I wish every day was like this so that I didn't have to feel this obligation to nobody when it is.