What I've Heard about Love (this week)

The other day I overheard a conversation at the jr. high that went something like this:

Girl 1: I am totally not friends with Megan anymore.

Girls 2, 3 and 4 in unison: WHY??

Girl 1: She is totally going out with Matt

Girls 2: That is so selfish!

Girl 1: No it's not! I totally liked him 1st and she knew it.

Girl 3: That is so selfish of you, she's just in love

Girls 2 and 4 in unison: yeah, she's just in love

Girl 3 (dreamily): I know. I was in love once... with Travis.

Yeah... they're in 8th grade.

Also on the subject of love, I've been reading this fantastic book by Elizabeth Gilbert called Eat, Pray, Love. I just started it, but it's very clever and, honestly, pretty inspiring. It's funny how the book you need always seems to find you. Anyway, I pretty much laughed my face off at her analogy of love being like a drug. Here it is:

"Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted- an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is witheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore- despite the fact that you KNOW he has it hidden somewhere... because he USED TO GIVE IT TO YOU FOR FREE). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes. So that's it. You have now reached infatuation's final desitnation- the complete devaluation of self."

That sounds familiar, a little bit... Love is a dangerous thing. Or, maybe it's actually not. It's all the junk on the way to love, and all the tricky feelings that seem like love, that are dangerous things.