aşk (love)

People say they don’t believe in love, yet I think they expect too much from it.

As children, everything thrilled us. A dog passing by, a new park around the corner, even a rainbow could leave us buzzing with excitement. Maybe it was the first rainbow we had ever seen. When we’re young, we love easily. Just like the colors in the sky feel magical because they’re unfamiliar, so does the feeling of love. We are unaware, unguarded. An eighty-year-old has lived through every kind of joy and sorrow. They are not so easily moved, and how could they be?

That emotional distance isn’t emptiness. It’s experience. Contrary to what many believe, I don't think it means love isn't real. It means it evolves with us. We don’t grow numb to love alone. We grow numb to everything. It is how we survive. As we age, we learn how to handle love and hopefully, we learn how to tell it apart from lust. This quiet shift is the inevitable result of living.

The love I felt at thirteen was more turbulent, more intense, than anything I feel now at nineteen. And honestly, that scares me. Sometimes, being able to rein in my emotions so easily makes me wonder if I’m only half-living. Back then, even a scary clown at a birthday party felt like the end of the world. But I grew up and learned that endings are rarely that simple. Now it isn’t the clown that frightens me. It’s the person behind the face paint. It’s the mask and the reason it’s there.

Maybe growing up does the same thing to love. It strips away the fantasy and the chaos. We stop mistaking intensity for truth.

Because love is not passion. It is not happiness. And it is certainly not destruction. Love is choosing someone, again and again. And if you are lucky, they choose you too. It is not about being drawn to one person but about being willing to give up everyone else for your person. That's why it does not die with age, nor does it fade.

We change, and love quietly changes with us.