How to tell if you’re in love:

If you think you’re in love, you’re not. Love is a big word not meant for that freshman girl who’s been sharing blankets every other weekend with someone she knew for nine years (been friends with for five, and laid side-by-side with for two). Love is a huge concept, but it’s not broad enough to encapsulate her junior self–the girl who spent a year reaching for the hand of someone who only cared about not being alone. 

You’re only in love when other people think you are too. That girl wasn’t in love because they didn’t think she was ready for love; that she could love. She studied too much and therefore did not have the capacity to focus on love, even though love paid no mind to the attention it received. She was too ambitious in her quest, so she could never be a lover; she was too aggressive of a seeker, so she could never be both. She wouldn’t have made a good love story, and so that girl wasn’t in love; despite how lovestruck she acted at times, she wasn’t in a position to be loved–no matter if she loves.

You’re only in love if other people acknowledge it as well–in public, not in private, because you need proof that it was real and there were witnesses when memory starts to fail your emotions. That girl wasn’t in love three years ago because if she was, her girlfriend’s sister would’ve teased them about being wrapped around each other in the morning, and their parents wouldn't have suspected so strongly what was already fact. Like then, she isn’t in love now because none of her friends will put a label on what she has–affectionate glances and fleeting touches–all too afraid of the title that summarized the experience. That girl was not in love because she, the lover, was played off as a joke–a parody to she, the leader. 

You’re only in love if the person you love isn’t scared of being in love with another girl. That girl wasn’t in love because if she was, then her partner wouldn’t credit all her “first”’s to a future boyfriend. She wouldn’t be feeling déjà-vu, watching them and their official lies that covered her existence; pouring the medicine of reality and swallowing the truth, mulling the thought that humor is the skin of dishonesty. If she was in love, her girlfriend wouldn’t have hid her endearments and soft nudges. Puffing up in public like a juvenile with a point to prove, too proud of their published persona to apologize in private; clandestine in their shame of keeping a person in secret–a series of broken oaths–but more embarrassed to keep a girl.

How to tell that you’re in love:

You are only in love if the other person recognizes it, if the world thinks it’s okay for you to be in love, if you are not too young to decide and not too stringy with your life and you seem carefree enough to take a chance with your heart. You are only in love if you are deemed worthy to be loved, capable of loving, and a better, more socially acceptable person in love. You are only in love if the other person is the same, if they won’t feel trepidation at answering the question of your name. You are not in love if you are not any of those things, and you never have been, and you never will be. So if you think you’re in love, you’re not.