so, last night I cried on the floor of my best friend's dorm hallway for roughly 30 minutes. mostly for the fact that love isn't perfect, and that people can live lives that seem great and be dying on the inside. that two people who've always served as an example to me of how it is possible to have a career and a marriage and be happy in both, of how I can be a doctor and still have a life and kids and a family, just completely destroyed that ideal. and whether marriage is actually forever; if you can actually be in love forever.

I've been thinking about it a lot today. Whether it's possible to be 80 and still in love, even though the definition of love changes. that's fine. sure, you don't want to be in love the same way when you're 20 and when you're 80. but whether you can be in love, not just mutually find each other tolerable and comfortable.

and then after church, josh sent me 1 corinthians 13 and told me to read the whole thing, not just the oft-quoted 4th verse. and so I did.

and I realized that love is perfect. that love is wonderful and incredible and perfect, and that sometimes we don't have it when we think we do, and not in the right form.

how we find the right form I haven't figured out yet. but I know that it's out there. and I want to believe you can keep it forever.

some people do, anyway. and that's what I want to have. like neruda does, in XVII.