It’s funny that as a writer, I am unable to find the words to describe how much I love something. It seems like the angst, the hatred, passion, regret, depression, confusion, longing can flow from my fingers like a flash flood clearing out the dirt between the pebbles from an unpaved road, causing whirlpools on my keyboard that produce such complex prose I’m not even sure I understand, even though my fingers wrote it.

Maybe that’s the beauty of it. I know you so well, but I can’t put that into words, I can’t do it justice and I’m afraid to even try. I wish I knew how to write about you.

It’s not funny at all. I’m afraid you’ll think less of how I think of you because I’m not writing about you. I just can’t find the words.

I want to scream at the people who wronged me, and writing has become an excellent outlet. But when it comes to loving you — maybe this isn’t the right platform. Maybe our love is better saved for the quiet moments we share laying next to each other in complete stalemate over what to watch on Netflix. Isn’t that true love?

Everything I want to say sounds so cliché. “I can’t live without you, you make me so incredibly happy.” This is the utmost truth. Boring vocabulary to explain how much you mean to me. You deserve so much more than plainly dressed words. You deserve complex prose, words wearing tuxedos and expensive jewelry, explaining how I thoroughly understand the very essence of you.

So, instead I give you actions. I give you the true me. Not the picture I paint in these pieces. I give you the real life, real breathing, really confused most of the time girl you see in front of you. You get my outbursts of emotion, the raw, real time reactions. Not the carefully processed thoughts and sentences placed carefully, letter by letter.

I feel obligated. Laws of passion set before me by the great writers of past and present. Declaring loud and obnoxious love stories with every media, through every platform. Swelling soundtracks accompany silver screen lovers, paintings and sculptures visually immortalizing wild acts of devotion. Episode after episode, fiction and non-fiction lovers bombard us with what passion should look like on television. Can’t we figure it out ourselves? I wish I knew what it was like to truly love without idealizing a five day relationship between two reckless teenagers who end up dead, without the perfectly flawed passion that sparks when pride and prejudice do battle and surrender to each other.

I wish I knew what it was like to be the very first person in love, to completely and holistically discover true love without any previous notion and expectation. Without my schoolgirl hopes and dreams manipulating actions, altering outcomes, without being convinced I was a ‘hopeless romantic,’ without a standard of particular reactions necessary to prove how in love I am.

I want to know what it is to love without knowing what love is. I want a blank slate, an empty dictionary, so I can give it our own definition. I want to rewrite Greek tragedies with you and I at the center, only we don’t end up blind, dead, and committing the horrid mistakes of self-fulfilling prophecy. I want to erase Shakespeare’s Sonnets, burn Swan Lake, tear up Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, give Bizet’s Carmen an everlasting cold, and slip roofies to Sleeping Beauty for eternity if it meant ridding myself of this pressure.

I could write you a symphony, counter melodies and homophony, dissonance and resolution. I could try, and fail, to perfectly capture what we have. I suppose it’s up to us to find our own definition, leave the definitions of others alone, and only focus on what you and I believe is love. Our love.

Is it pointless to capture the impossible? For you, I will sure as hell give my all to try.