Love holds my hand at four in the morning, when I wake up panicked and sweaty from a particularly nasty nightmare and can’t get my heart rate to go down— the sound of classical music eventually lulling me back to sleep. Love keeps me company during those late school nights when the purple moons beneath my eyes are at their darkest and there doesn’t seem to be an end to the list of thing I need to do before dawn breaks. When I feel as though I will drown under the weight of my responsibilities, the sound of ambient music pulls me up to the surface and I can breathe again.
I have also become conscious of the fact that love doesn’t just come from instruments or the radio or the glowing screen of my iPod. It manifests itself in other people too. Love is the way my friend and I huddle over my laptop, waiting for the release of a long-awaited album. Love is the mixtape that my cousins and I make the night before we set out on the first road trip of the summer, when we’re too adrenalized and jittery to sleep. Love is the way my mother and father dance to John Legend at the wedding of some unnamed family friend, when, momentarily, all the arguments seem to be worth it. Love is when my best friend and I send excited text messages full of exclamation marks, gleeful about the concert tickets we’ve purchased. Love is the playlists that my friend makes for me that make me wonder if he is something more than a friend. Love is when someone who I don’t know all too well asks what I’m listening to on my phone, and when I show them the screen, they break out into a smile: “Oh, I love that song!”