Why do we love the ones we love? Some of the people we love, they loved us first. Loving them back felt natural without us ever really thinking about it. I don't remember a time when I didn't love my parents and my sister. There may be ups and down, but love is the blackboard, whatever else goes on it only chalk dust. Some of the people we love, it's through the accumulation of shared experiences and survived battles. Most of my closest friends are people I've known for decades. Those relationships have had their share of tumult, but we've come out on the other side, and now it's hard to imagine those bonds ever being broken. Some of the people we love, almost immediately they're exactly the person we needed. I met my wife when I was seven years removed from really having my feet under me, at a moment when another relationship, one that had never been quite right, was in the process of disintegrating. It took some time for me to find the courage to ask her out, but within weeks of our first date I had the ineffable something I'd been missing.
