Why do we love?

Why do we love? Can we even help it? We spend our whole lives searching for love, for the recognition in our soul that it has met it's counterpart, the grandest love of all. They say that that love is the best and the worst. But along the way, we fall in love over and over and over again. We do it even when it is wrong, like this odd feeling I have for a teacher who is also a friend and I know that if he was like 20 years younger there could have been something....We do it on the tiniest scale possible every moment of every day. But who is to say that that makes one love smaller or bigger. My love for my friend makes me hurt because she is hurt because her dog was just put to sleep. I can feel that echo, maybe because of my own memories of when a dog died, but maybe more so because I am a friend. But even my love cannot shield her from that pain. She and others have told me that I am a good friend but that is not true. Because if I was a good friend I would be there all the time for her and I am not. I get annoyed and aggravated with her, even though I love her...I am human. I am not a good friend. I am just me. That does not mean I am bad or good. I can't give my whole heart because I am human, I can't love anybody truly or wholy because I am human so that does not make me a good sister of friend or daughter. We love without meaning too, without wanting too, like how I love my friend Tie who is just unbearably sweet and calls me his pearl. I avoid them, I avoid that love and the love that I feel for my teacher. I even avoid the love I feel for my grandfather, my favorite person in the world, because when I start to truly love him he starts to slip away, or maybe he starts slipping away and that is when I truly love him. It hurts to love. There is that momentary pleasure as I watch Sophomore, a new crush of mine, fiddle with his hair, and for some reason that is enough to leave me sprawling. That one moment of joy kills, eventually. We cannot help but love, we must be insane because we just do it over and over again hoping that the outcome will be different but is it? Does our love change anything? Our hearts can heal but we will never be immune to love. Maybe that is when we are whole, when we have truly given ourselves away to another. I don't know. All I know is that my heart is full of tiny pinpricks where light shines through, is dripping with strings and knots to people I love and is just waiting to be covered in more. I will love.