How Do I Know?
When it comes up, I tell people I first fell in love when I was sixteen. This is accepted without question, and I generally do not expand on this. But every time I say this, I ask myself, How do I know? Because surely, if I was truly in love, it would be so obvious as to be unquestionable in its merit. Surely, if I was truly in love, I would have been able to recognize it while I was feeling it.
But really, how does anyone know what they are feeling the first time they feel it? There are common, shared understandings, but they can never be universal. And when the shared understanding of first love is boy meets girl, how could one expect to know when the story instead goes girl meets girl?
So it still begs the question: how do I know I was in love?
Perhaps, it does not matter if I actually was; only that the feelings I remember are ones I recognize now as love.