How do you know?

I'm one of those people who use the term "love" quite loosely, and I feel quite justified to do so. We don't have a standardized definition of love anyway, so nobody can really criticize me for being contextually wrong.

So I realized that I tend to use the word on something I get really excited about. That can be just about anything, and I don't even need to have a constant excitement about it, but whenever I feel that emotional jump, the word just comes out. When a bowl of spectacularly hearty pasta with chicken & mushroom was put in front of me, accompanied with heavenly-soft bread, which I ate with succulent tomatoes from the dish, I exclaimed that I love Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (I should note here that I've been disappointed by it - their waiter once insisted that sushi should be served at 18 degrees Celcius. Probably my fault for ordering sushi in a coffee place).
The thing is, that pasta looks and tastes so good that during those moments, I forgot about the sushi incident, or how they don't take my debit card because they made an arrogantly exclusive deal with another bank, or how they don't have electrical plugs for my laptop in the non-smoking section. That pasta made me forget about all that, and for a brief period, I love the restaurant.

Another thing about "love" - by my definition at least - is that as it excites you so, you normally can't keep it to yourself. You just want the whole world to know...although that probably have something to do with me being a girl : expressing emotions through words. That's how I often find myself in outrageously excited conversations, larger intensity if I found more people in love with the same thing, but still quite intense even if it's just me blatantly describing affectionate things to anyone who's listening.

The last odd thing about my definition of "love" is this : as much as you want to be out spoken about your feelings, sometimes the only subject unaware of it may be the object of your affection (linguistics, linguistics...). This remains to be a mystery to me, but my best guess so far (as I've found from my muses) is we don't proclaim it in front of them because, of all people, we fear the reaction from those we love.

So I guess for me, that rush I get when I encounter something wonderful, so amazing that I'm willing to set aside everything else, deserve to be labeled "love". I may be on a limb here, but it's probably because my normal self is so obsessively analytic (can't stop thinking about every little thing and how they're intertwined) that I enjoy moments when I'm allowed (in fact, I'm disallowed to counter) to think about just one thing. That's when the world is wondrously simple, because it's just about a single thing that's making you happy. Nothing else matters.

And so even though I'm terribly furious at him, even though I hated him for abruptly tossing me to the side, blatantly disregarding what he himself has built up in three weeks - just like what his ex did to him, only it's seven years - and as I've built an immense dislike for him for the simple reason of making me feel bad about myself,

I forgot about all that when I'm in front of him.

You know when you're so mad at someone that you plan to say all these mean horrible insults to them, and you think about how good it would feel to be able to hurt them as much as they've hurt you? You always think "I'm not going to forgive them, no matter how they ask for it!"

And yet, magically, it all disappears at a sudden. They don't even need to do anything. When they're right there in your face - bowl of gorgeous pasta, romance interest, a wonderful performer - the only thing you can think about is that they're in front of you.

I'm furious at him, but I can't be furious when I see him.
And that's how I know.

So now I'm hearing that he doesn't have an answer, which I find odd since it really seems like he does have an answer - he just can't bring himself to say it out loud. But even if he really is confused, and if he is wondering if he's currently doing the right thing, then it's actually quite simple, because you almost don't need to think on this. The whole thing controls you - it controls your mind. And I guess just as my mind is controlled forcibly to think only about him, what should happen is whenever he sees her, anything about me (and everything else) should completely disappear. If it doesn't, then he's going the wrong way.

And that's how he'd know.