March 2nd, 2010 | 1 comment | Unfiltered

In February, I had the opportunity to participate in the All You Need series over at Ophelia’s Webb. It was a big fat lovey dovey month of daily posts from our community about what love is. And it was one of the hardest posts I have written so far. Not in the aspect that the concept of love is difficult for me to write about. It’s not. Obviously. When it comes to love, I’m all over it. I know what I want and what I need and what I have to offer and it’s all smiles and sparkles and unicorns and rainbows when it happens.

What was hard about this post in particular is that I was in this strange place when I wrote it. Not like dark-alley-strange, but strange like, in limbo. There was so much that could happen from the time it posted (February 15) until the time that I will further reference as “The Weekend”.

My post is below, but the post from the All You Need series that really rings true, especially after The Weekend is this one by Sharalyn Hartwell, a Generation Y columnist for the Examiner.

Here’s some food for thought:

Pretend your capacity for love is a beaker (like the ones you used in science class.) The water you pour into the beaker is the love you feel for a special someone. You may have a 500 mL beaker while he/she has a 250 mL beaker. Both are filled to the brim with water, holding (giving) all they can, but your beaker just happens to contain more water, simply because its capacity is much greater. As such, you have more love to give and you likely need more love to feel fulfilled.

I KNOW RIGHT!?!

Totally amazing, so simple, and definitely true!

So maybe my challenge now is not trying to figure out next steps or how it’s supposed to feel by any normal definition. If you know anything about this story, you know that it’s far from normal. Maybe the challenge now is all coming back to beakers. Which, given the context of my post below, is HILARIOUSLY ironic.

I think maybe now the challenge is for me to not only assess the compatibility of the beakers (not giving too much, not overflowing etc) but also to assess the capacity in which the beakers SHOULD be filled. And with what. Do I put the same kind of love in the beakers for my family as I do for my friends? Do I fill up the beaker for my best friend as high as I would if that best friend were my boyfriend?

So, my friends, in case you didn’t catch it, here is my guest post for the All You Need Series.

Love Happens For a Reason

I’ve known since I was a girl that the ultimate goal for this thing we call life is to be happy like my parents. That much has remained the same. As I grew up, I wanted to be an actress, a comedian, a lawyer, an athletic trainer, a surgeon. But there was always one constant that I have counted on in my equation of life while all of the other variables continue to change and shift and derail my plans.

Love.

I was almost a junior in college when I moved to Florida. I had decided that I was going to major in biology, go to med school, become an otolaryngologist (head and neck surgeon) and save lives for a living.

But then I met a guy.

Not even anyone special, in fact, he was the king of douchebaggery but you know, at the time, we were totally getting married someday. I found more value in hanging out with him than I did trying to figure out chemistry….

Read the rest over at Ophelia’s Webb.

So it really all does come back down to chemistry and science, doesn’t it?