I watched Blue Valentine so I have thoughts and feelings

I'm not going to lie and say I know how falling in love feels. I'm not going to say that I know the equation for the perfect relationship. Out of every experience that has ever occurred on this Earth, the comparative few I've had in my short twenty years is laughable. But I try. I may not be at a point where I'm brave enough to put myself out there all the time and experience everything for myself. I don't think that my emotions could handle that. I feel everything too deeply. But I do read and watch and observe and try to understand other people's experiences and stories. That's the only way we can understand people and how we function as a collective community. There is no way that you could ever understand what everyone is going through. It would be fatiguing to even consider that. But books, writing, theatre, and acting give us a way to experience the world through someone else. We have the chance to sink into the mind of someone else. We can see the world from their point of view. Though them, you can know what it feels like to fall in love. You might not have first hand knowledge, but you could have a shadow of it. An echo. Something to indicate that it is a real experience that people have. After all of the great art created around it, after the humanists considered it to be the founding principle, after Christians established an entire religion around the concept, Love can't be something only found in fiction. It has to be more than that. The experience every single person has had in the history of human existence has to make it more than a vague concept. Love is more that a thought or a feeling. It is tangible. Love is lying when she catches you looking at her, because she's not ready to hear it yet. Love is cooking dinner because you know he's had a long day. Love is staying up until he gets home, just so you know he is safe. Love is being 100% sure and completely uncertain, all at the same time. Love is feeling so much that you don't know exactly what you're feeling. Love is putting your chin on his shoulder and whispering "it's okay". Love is the brushes of fingertips against his temple because it's where his thoughts live. I know what Love is. I just don't know how the journey to it feels.