I used to think that true love was meant to STAY, but I've found that true love LASTS in our hearts, even though it doesn't stay the same forever. It can't. People change.  People break up.  People die.  People grow closer.  People lose touch and grow apart, physically and/or emotionally.

For me, it's impossible to un-love someone, even though love, like everything in life, is transient, just passing through. If I ever loved someone truly, then that love isn't invalidated by the new feelings that come along during the transition of the relationship. The other feelings are just added on, and those feelings may move to the forefront, while the love may take on a new, less prominent form, maybe moving to a quiet, sometimes dusty, corner of my heart.

I know I will never un-love my first love, my last love, my former best friend, friends with whom I've lost regular touch, or my deceased loved ones, although each is loved in different ways. But as life and time go on, and during the transition of the relationships, grief, anger, complacency, or some other feeling will surely come along, and poof! Love goes from its rock solid form to a slippery liquid, or even to a barely visible vapor, sometimes permeating itself all around, up and through all of those other feelings. But it's still love. It can still make you laugh or cry or smile or sigh. That's my opinion.

When I love, I love true and hard. I think life is too short and love is too fleeting to do anything else. But I'm sure that's why my heart hurts so much when it's broken. But somewhere along life, I finally came to the realization that everything is a temporary existence, even heartbreak, though it can linger in love's vapor.

Now, infatuation is a whole other thing. Infatuation eventually turns to apathy or obsession, and thankfully, I'm at the point in life where it takes way too much energy to obsess over too much of anything. I'm more inclined to say, "fuck it," first. Life, like love, is passing through, and time is not a luxury I have to waste obsessing about people who couldn't appreciate me as "the one" when I was "the one."

Now, I'm just "the one" who got away. :)