Break The Best Friends

Chapter 42

The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it, from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love, because love is not just something that happens to you: It is a certain special way of being alive. Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life." - Thomas Merton

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I have lived seventeen years of my life as Caroline Harper, the last child and the only daughter of Nicole and Noah Harper, the couple who fell in love at the tender age of fifteen and dated for fourteen years before getting married in their late twenties.

My brothers and I were all products of their undying love for each other. As long as I can remember, my parents had been very much in love with each other, before they got this business fever that is. They would go out on dates every Friday and would always be kissing and giggling with each other like teenagers. As kids, my brothers and I always felt that it was gross to see our parents making out with each other – it still is – but now that I think about it, that kind of love that my parents had, a love that never died even after so many years was something unique and precious.

Harpers are always lucky with love, I remember dad saying this to me when I was about seven years old. But unlucky for me, I don't think I would ever find someone for me that would be as perfect as my dad was for my mom.

Yes, I did fall in love with Axel, but all those months of being with him, it never felt real. I know this was so wrong of me to say, but I didn't feel the connection. Sure, I loved him, but I never saw a future for us in say, ten years after high school. My fifteen year old self wanted a fantasy, but now my seventeen year old self was seeing the reality.

What was love?

I know this question widely exists in every person's mind, and I was no exception. The thing is I don't know what love was. Well, at least not until today.

There are so many levels to love.

One such level is the love that we have for our friends. Friendship is also a kind of love. It doesn't seem like love what we feel for our friends, but we do feel love towards our friends, this is what helps us get along with each other so well, and this is the reason why we miss them when we don't see them for a long time. It is also why we hold certain friends over the others, no matter what happens. Sometimes, the bond between friends deepens to the point where a stronger bond of love is made, making them family, in my case, it is like the love that I have for Luke – he is family after all.

Another level of love, are for our siblings and our other family members. Even though, we do things to our family members, and sometimes we don't really like some of them, that bond which holds a family together is still there. It is this family bond level of love that brought about the phrase, 'Blood is thicker than water'. We will do anything for our family, things which we would never in a million years even consider about doing to anyone else.

The third level of love is that bond between a mother and her children – which in my case, I still doubt existing. According to one of Andrew's psychology book though, there is no love stronger than the love between a mother and her children, nor will ever be there. This bond starts from the very first tiny fluttering of movement inside the mother's womb when her baby is formed within her and never ends, even after one of them dies. A mother protects her children in the name of love, and directs them through life using her life as the example to follow.

The last mentionable level of love, is the bond that brings a man and a woman together. This level is among the strongest of all the levels of love. It is this level of love that has brought together kingdoms into nations in the past, and has ended many great wars as it has started.