I do not pretend to know about Love.

I sit on a Sunday morning in my boyfriend's house with a bowl of fresh green beans I've steamed because they were just at their turning point. Steamed green beans and coffee properly creamed and sugared happen to be my breakfast this morning and I munch on them watching Dune on DVD on a loveseat my boyfriend humored me in buying secondhand at Goodwill for 75 dollars. He made space in a downstairs room, in a room previously muddled up with boxes of old VHS tapes, a lawn mower, a vacuum cleaner, an old microwave, old aquariums and old posters. He cleared it all out and moved in my secondhand loveseat (which matches my end tables almost too well) because he knew I just wanted a quiet place to sit. And I sit now, with green beans and coffee, watching Dune, writing this. Sunday mornings.

And I think, perhaps, that's Love. Which seems appropriate, it being a loveseat.

And I can quote many popular things about Love. Love is a battlefield. All's fair in Love and war. There are more.

Many friends tell me what they think about Love, too. "Love is about mutual respect," one roommate's told me. "It's the little things," another friend has said. "I just want to find someone who doesn't bore me," someone else has mentioned. And then the ever popular: "I just want to find someone."

That last statement, I fear, comes from desperation. A desire to just not be alone, to feel like someone *gets* us, to feel wanted, to feel understood. I don't think that's a bad thing - human beings are a social animal, no? But I think it's interesting that so many people can feel so alone - it seems almost oxymoronic.

Needless to say, I think about this now with my green beans and my coffee and my Dune on my loveseat because I have many friends lately who've gotten their hearts broken. We go to the Casba and we go to the Alley Cat and these heartbroken friends say, "Where am I supposed to find someone? Do I find someone here?" and we all laugh because we all know a bar is the last place a person will more than likely find the big L-O-V-E. My bohemian poet friend Caroline and I have had many conversations about the unnerving feeling bars can give us - we watch men and women alike gazing at one another behind drinks and cigarettes and booming bass-driven music, mouthing to their friends, "Yeah, I'd hit that." Which is fine. I've been there, too. But I do not think the "Yeah, I'd hit that," sentiments will morph into romantic relationship feelings the next morning, thank you.

So where does one find someone? Through a friend? At work? In the grocery store? At the gym? I laugh when someone tells me they met their significant other on MySpace or eHarmony or Match.com, but I also understand, too, that we get sick of meeting people the usual old ways.

I do not pretend to know about Love. But I see too many people, too many friends, unhappy due to a lack of it. I find myself at a loss at what to tell them. Too many times have they heard, "Love comes when you stop looking for it." These heartbroken friends have heard this so often that they're becoming jaded and cynical. They allow themselves to be manipulated by their exes or taken advantage of by the aforementioned "Yeah, I'd hit that," bar crowd. And to tell them, "This all happens for a reason," makes them all scowl.

So I apologize to them. Perhaps that's the wrong thing to do, but lately it's also how I feel. I'm so sorry that my friends are hurting. We are too young to be this hurt.