"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it?

It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.

You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you.

They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.

Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.

It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.

I hate love.” – Neil Gaiman


That's Neil Gaiman for you. I personally don't think he hates love. He probably hates all the hurt, pain, discomfort, agony and vulnerability that come packaged with LOVE - without a life-time love/time/money-back guarantee. In economic terms, LOVE would most possibly be a significant high-liability investment with zero returns.

Gaiman probably knows more about love than anyone else - to be able to describe it so perfectly and aptly.

After reading that passage, I realised I "hate" love too. But no matter how hard I try, I may cannot help falling in it. If someday it comes my way. It is what makes us - complete. I'm sure everyone needs it just as much, no matter how much they claim to 'hate' it. To say you don't need love, is as good as saying you can survive without air.

I've read somewhere that men are created with an innate need to be with someone. And that's why we are constantly searching for that person - instinctively, subconsciously, unknowingly, unwittingly - throughout our lives.

Someone once said,"To love someone is nothing; to be loved by someone is something; but to be loved by the one you love - is everything."

What do you think?