Can I really love you?

Prologue

"I've been too scared my whole life to say the things that I actually wanted to say. I was never the type to actually speak my mind and be vocal about my feelings, but this time even though it may be painful, I'll tell her that I like her!" 

What is love actually? Does it feel good? Does it sting? Do you get rich by having love? Do you just love somebody because of their looks? Personality? How do you know if you're in love in the first place?

I grew up in a broken household, my mom and dad are usually fighting each other almost everyday because of just trivial things, so me and my younger siblings would just always just go play outside. I didn't want them to hear vulgar things coming out of our parent's mouths, as I was the eldest I didn't want my younger siblings to see our parents fighting all the time.  I knew that the responsibility of being the eldest was heavy, so I must be able to at least be a parent to my younger siblings. It's really hard if 

Was this the limit to the love that they had for one another? Is this supposed to be love even?

It was a horrible marriage that after a long time bantering with each other they finally agreed to have divorce, I thought that it was the best choice they could've done, not just for themselves but for us, their children. And because of that we went on to live with our grandparents from our mother's side, while dad was basically gone, he didn't show his face ever since. 

Mom was constantly working her butt off just to provide for the 3 of us, I really admire our mother for having such a strong face despite all the things that she had to go through. But then suddenly our mother became ill as she was working so hard, but luckily it wasn't anything serious. 

But misfortune came before us again, our grandfather died as the same week my mother was sick, it was devastating especially for our grandmother, they were married for 45 years. They had their moments together both bad and good, but it was still very sad to see the state that she was in. 

Our family was dealing with many different problems after that. Because of the things that happen it made me really weak, I became quiet and gloomy, but I didn't let it affect my responsibilities as the eldest sibling. Eventually my mother was feeling good after month of rest, and eventually time healed covered up the bad memories we had of our past and now I'm a high-school student. 

I don't really have fond memories of school, because I didn't think that everybody would always be happy with me, eventually they'll do something to you and the realtionship will just be broken. I didn't want to trust anyone too much, I only did the things that was needed to do and say things that was needed, I didn't want to have a strong reationship with somebody, because I was afraid that I'll lose them, or maybe a falling out will occur between us. But I guess I've been very lonely because of that during my earlier days in middle school, but now I want to change things, I want to make friends and have fun memories with them, I want to try and have lasting relationships with other people and try to actually "connect" with them. 

Only problem is I have absolutely no social skills whatsoever, but I do talk people engage with me. It's just that I can't relate to them, I can't seem to follow conversations and I just unconsciously stay quiet. Damn, I can't seem to even help myself huh. 

But even though I'm still like this I want to improve myself, so for the last month I've been trying my best to practice talking to people, well with the help of the mirror of course to see what kind of expressions I'll make when I'm talking. And I swear that it's worse than I thought, I never really had good happy expressions since my childhood, I would always steel myself so my siblings woudn't worry too much. *Sigh, I guess this is really hard to do.