What Is Love

   When I was young I always thought love would be easy I would meet that person I connected with and just like in a fairy tale live happily ever after. It did not take me long to learn that thoughts,feelings and knowledge are so many worlds away from each other. Early in my life I learned that love can hurt and do damage to ones  soul, damage that may never go away no matter how hard one try's. Putting myself out there full force with all my being for another person holding nothing back was an awesome thing and nice to feel a feeling of freedom being myself. I was not prepared for the fact a little of me goes a long way and my crazy no holds bared way was not easy for others to take. I would have to learn to hold back and I did try that but in doing so lost what made me the person I am. I became more like a walking talking image of what I thought others wanted me to be and the real me slowly disappeared to the point when I looked in a mirror I was looking at a stranger. It seemed others liked the fake me so I worked at keeping the real me hidden but inside I was suffering a slow emotional death.    
   I went out looking for love with my false walk and talk etc assimilating into the world becoming like those around me taking on their likes dislikes mannerisms to become what I thought I should be to be accepted . For a time it seemed like at last I fit in. I would meet others in my search for love who I had feelings for and tried to have relationships with but I was always left feeling empty inside. I was putting so much effort ito being what I thought they wanted I lost track of who I was and thinking maybe this love thing is just not real. 
   I gave up and went back to being me and tried the love thing again I soon learned the persons I invested and entrusted my feelings and emotions with could not or would not accept me for who I was. I would also learn  that there are those who only wanted a small piece of me and not the whole package so they took what they wanted then walk away.
   I own the fact I went into the love thing with rose colored glasses much the way I did many things in life early on, but life taught me some hard lessons that effect me to this day. Once I was knocked on my ass a few times the rose tint started to fade and I began to see things from clearer eyes.  I returned to be guarded with my feelings to hold back and not let people see the real me learned to put on happy face even when I was feeling emotional pain from doing so.
   There are those who were lucky enough to find that special person early in life or so I am told. I wonder what it would have been like to not  have to go through the roller coaster of emotional drain that giving myself to someone can take only to end up alone in the end. Giving bits and pieces of myself trying to connect with someone and hoping they except me as I am the good the bad and the ugly bits.
   Seems in the love department I failed in so many ways and invested my energy in the wrong people. Looking back I now know I did not love myself and was not equipped to love another and picked my partners knowing they were damaged. Looking back my choices in love were in many ways selfish on my part serving my need to fix others because I did not know how to fix myself.  I to this day can not honestly say I love myself or have learned how to do that.  I do know time is running out I am in human years more than half way done in this crazy thing called life and still do not feel that all consuming love others seem to have. I exist I move day to day but don't feel  the connection or passion of another human. I guess in my next life if  I am lucky enough to have one  maybe I will learn what love really is or if there is such a thing?