There's family love and there's friendly love, but I'm talking about romantic love, intimate love, love between two people who mean the world to each other.

If A loves B and B loves A in return just as much that, to me, is love. But is love ever that simple? Sometimes it is. We need not make such a big fuss about love. It doesn't have to be difficult. I would love it if it weren't so difficult. But sometimes, the truth to the question is, NO.

Imagine you're sitting in one of those window seats on the second floor library connection hallways and someone walks by causing you to basically drop what you were doing. Mesmerized, intrigued and maybe even speechless, you wipe the drool that dangles from your chin and hope and dream that the gods will be good to you and allow you to run into her or him again.

Sometimes this scenario leads to great things. And sometimes once one is able to see beyond the looks and there really isn't much there though, a friendship may surface, and at other times, there may be nothing at all.

Scenario II: Suppose you are past the looks and that person also has a wonderful personality. More than that, the interests you two share just don't stop, in fact they're too frighteningly similar. All is good on the road to love, yes? No, not necessarily. You may be head over heels for this person but unless this person also feels the same towards you, you've got nothing but time. You can spend time with this person; get to know her or him. You can make clear and suggestive moves to show how you feel towards this person. This person of your affection may get the idea and if all was ideal, maybe she or he would also feel the same. But suppose that she or he didn't. You may even go so far as to talk to the person about it, revealing how you feel and just hoping that their heart hears your pleas. But alas, sometimes things just don't work out that way.

You might be given the "F" word-no, I mean the other one, "friends." It hurts to hear that sometimes. Maybe you can take some kind of consolation in that "If we can't be lovers, at least we can be friends" mentality. Or maybe you cančt. Maybe this person makes you feel so good about yourself. Maybe you can't stop thinking about this person. You're always wondering what she or he is doing. You enjoy being around this person and you would give anything to be near her or him at all times. After all, this person embodied everything you dreamed; your preferences for looks, a wonderful and fitting personality and of course, the long line of similar interests.

If that person doesn't "love" you back, what do you do? Do you change your list of preferences? Maybe what you envisioned as the perfect person is too much; she or he just doesn't exist and you need to come back down to earth and get real. Are you just going to settle for someone else who comes along? Okay, this is starting to sound more like the way that love is.

I don't know the answer to this. I don't seek to answer the questions of love by writing any of this. As I have said before, I suppose that I seek some sort of empathy and universality with people, whoever they may be. Different as we may be, we are still all people.

Let's go for another fun ride. So you're on the lookout for love. You're looking, you're always seemingly getting closer with each meeting, each date, each day, but you're always still ending up alone. The friends leave the party, you've got dishes to do and there is no one there to help you, to be by your side and just be there for you.

What if somewhere along the way, you became the hunted? All the while from your point of view, you are looking and searching, someone has also been looking and searching and he or she have narrowed in on you.

The feeling could be more than mutual and things are all hunky dory. Congratulations! Let's have a party. Now, what if the feeling is not mutual? What if all you can do is come off stunned, puzzled and seemingly taking little baby steps backwards trying to make some sense of this picture in front of you. If you are looking for love, do you pursue it because this time love knocked on your door? You might wonder, what's really at the core of things though if you chose to pursue it. I would hope that love is stronger than convenience or serendipity. You wouldn't want to pull out of the relationship and hurt anybody later along the road because you thought you were in love, would you? What an awkward situation to be in. You're perhaps chasing someone else and the chase is and has been unsuccessful, and now someone's chasing you and also ending up unsuccessful.

Are we all just chasing each other and unaware of it? How hard is it to tell someone that you might love him or her, that you want to love him or her, but are too afraid that things might not be the same on the other side. It is a strange place to be when you have revealed how you feel about a person to that person and there is nothing on the other end, like a busy dial tone or worse, a hang up. You can't force someone to love you. She or he is not just going to wake up one day and realize that they love you. If perhaps he or she didn't see it the first time you two met, then what along the line would make things change? Maybe your looks changed? Maybe time has changed you? Or maybe there is just nothing there between the two of you. Never was, never is, never will be.

I can only speak on how I truly feel. I have family and friends. They are wonderful, but they can only do so much for me. I need that person who is willing to know me as much as I am willing to know her. I'd like her to be my best friend. I'd like to share things with her that are only between her and me and no one else. I'd like to be secure in knowing that I could depend on her for anything I needed and I would hope that she feels that same way about me. I could call her at any hour of the day and she would be there for me. There are other things that I look for in "her" but I don't really need to get into them here, because they're things that are special to me, and perhaps they wouldn't mean so much to you, so why even list them?

I'm sure there's much more to love. I was just skimming my head and my heart at this moment, thinking about this thing called love. Maybe, you'll start thinking about it too. Happy Valentines Day!