A small lifetime has happened in the span of this month. I celebrated my 26th birthday among friends, meeting new people and basking in the glory of sushi and books during the day. I have been immersed in contented happiness and occasional fearful sadness. The passage of time, the inability to change the course of nature. Longing to express myself, and fear of where that will take me. Work, work and more work, punctuated with moments of laughter, and tears. And watching my usual faith that things will work out battle with the fear that it’s all random.

I woke up in an intense and difficult mood today. My good friend is here visiting and last night, after work, we went out to my favorite karaoke place to spend time with friends and belt out to the chorus lines of our favorite songs. I tried to get out of the pensive and brooding mindset that I was in. The funk. I laughed and sang along, and my friend, who is very intuitive, looked at me with worried eyes and asked why I was staring off into space. But he knew, because it was the subject that dominated our conversation for most of the evening: love, and the lack thereof.

Life is fleeting. It is beautiful and painful and it cannot be controlled. We are as light as leaves, thrown about in Life’s winds. We are taken to the edges of earth and back, to the edges of ourselves and farther. And the only thing, the most eloquent of all, is Love. We would be barbarians to deny it, fools to try to control it. And yet we seek to rein it in, to capture it, to evade it and destroy it. We become barbarians in it. It overwhelms us and we no longer recognize ourselves, a mere whisper of the shadows that we used to recognize. We love and love and love until we are sucked dry and sobbing and smiling and remembering. It’s all love, every moment of it. It is impossible and as necessary as air. And I want it. I want to devour it like candy, because it’s all that’s left when all else is gone. And when it’s gone, it feels like nothing else is left.

If not now, when?