A Feeling We Once Didn’t Understand

There was a time, not so long ago, when we didn’t know what love truly meant.

Back in the days of crayons and school bells, Love was a word we scribbled in notebooks and laughed about in whispers. It was what the heroes did in movies, dance in the rain, fight the world, sing to the skies. Overdramatic. Overrated. Unreal.

We would sit with our friends and giggle at the idea of “love.” Why would someone cry over a person who doesn’t even care? We didn’t understand. We thought it was weakness, fantasy, something foolish. We saw love as a game adults played, not something for us, not something real. Until it happened to us.

Not all at once, no. Love didn’t arrive with trumpets or declarations. It came quietly. Maybe it was a glance across the classroom. Maybe it was a moment that felt like more than just a moment. Maybe it was the way they said our name, like it was something worth remembering.

And suddenly, we were no longer the people who made fun of love stories.
We became the ones who lived them. It hit us like a wave we never expected, an ache in the chest that had no name at first. We just… wanted to be near them. To talk to them. To mean something to them. We started doing things we swore we never would, waiting for their messages, reading into their silences, changing ourselves, hoping they’d notice.

And when the time came, that moment of courage, when we confessed, in awkward words or quiet looks. We realized love was never about the answer. Yes or no, it didn’t matter. Because love had already settled into our bones. It had already carved its place into our everyday. We chose them, every day, in every moment, in every breath. Even if they didn’t choose us back.

And that’s when everything changed.

The “overrated” stories?

Now we understood them.

We understood why the lovers in books cried. Why characters waited years. Why they sacrificed everything. Because we were now living the same ache. We no longer questioned love’s madness. We felt it. We saw how it takes everything ego, pride, leaves only a heart that loves, openly and deeply.

People tell us to move on. To have self-respect. To be strong. But those people forget, love was never about strength. It was about surrender. And sometimes, we choose to stay wounded, not because we like the pain, but because the memory of that one person still feels softer than a future without them.

So now, when someone says love is overrated… We smile. Because only those who haven’t felt it say that. Only those who haven’t watched themselves fall, helplessly, hopelessly, beautifully, would ever believe love is fiction.

But we know better. We’ve tasted it. We’ve cried for it. We’ve written poems at midnight and deleted messages at 2am. We’ve played songs just to feel their presence again. We’ve waited… and waited…And we’d do it all over again.

Back then, love was something we got wrong. But now?

It’s a religion of feeling. A prayer we whisper even when no one listens. A wound we protect, not because we like the pain, but because it reminds us of someone we once loved more than ourselves. And maybe still do.