official emotion

A man I know once told me he had had his heart broken three times. Broken. Not that he had been hurt three times, or that three bad things had happened to him, but that his heart had been broken three times. As if there was a heart ex-ray, oooo, that was a bad sprain, but here your heart is officially broken. What comprises a heartbreak? Is there some scale of pain I know nothing about? Love, what is love, as opposed to infatuation or lust or interest or any of a thousand other feelings? How does a mind distinguish jealousy (is it envy?) or anger (is it frustration?) or confusion (do we not want to admit what we really know?)How can someone say they love one person? Feeling strongly enough about one person to commit to them for a lifetime, that is completely understandable, natural, as it should be. Understanding one someone, feeling understood, feeling safer and more comfortable with one person than anyone else, it is a wonderful thing, human epiphany, hey I found you! Indeed, some people spend the bigger part of their lives feeling incomplete, searching, wanting, sometimes needing, “the one.” A soul mate. But, is that to say we did not love the ones we knew before? We find true love, everything else is just that, something else. What came before (or after or during) is a crush or attraction or horniness. It did not qualify, didn’t make the necessary score on the scale, it isn’t love. We were too young, or lonely or blind. We didn’t commit, it didn’t last. It was all sex, there was no sex, I didn’t know them well enough or long enough, I knew them too well. Is love is quantifiable? Identifiable? One certain thing? A percentage of our time or attention or sex drive?Don’t pigeonhole chambers of the heart, don’t reserve feelings for where they “should” land.