"To Love", or "To be in Love" ??!!

I was reading the book “Shantaram” a few days ago….

Didier and Lin were sitting in Café Leopold...

Didier : So do you Love her??

Lin: No

Didier : Are you in Love with her??

Lin : Yes

It was well past midnight… I wanted to finish up that chapter and hit the bed…

But this conversation caught me eyes… I kept the book aside, lit up a Malboro and sat on the window sill, trying to fathom what those words meant…

What did he mean by those words?? At the first glance, they appeared the same to me… but the contradictory answers given by Lin made me ponder…

The stick was half gone… the ashes were falling on the sill, seeped in the moon light, like the flakes of snow… flashbacks had been quite distressing… they had played havoc in my life… and I needed the answers… answers to why did it happen the way it happened… and I was to find those long awaited answers by a fictional book written by an outlaw from an island thousands of miles away…

“I love you”… and “I’m in love”… those words now meant worlds apart to me…

When we say, “I love you”… it shows that your desire to love someone is backed up with the conscious willingness of your heart, Its something like an “Active phenomenon”…You are in control of this emotion called “Love”…. That you still have the power to say "I don’t love you"… That your love for someone is something YOU have chosen and have full control over it (i.e. the choice)…

But when we are “In love” with someone… it is an entirely different scenario…

It means, we are possessed by love… you cannot call your shots… you have no control whatsoever on the emotion of “Love”, however you may try… You have NO CHOICE BUT TO LOVE… The tentacles of Love have engulfed you , not letting you get away, however hard and desperate you maybe…

Being “In Love” is painful… and it hurts the most when it is one-sided…

I had never loved; rather I was in love… I wish I never was… I wish I never would in the future… I would rather not throw myself at the mercy of a stupid human emotion… I love myself way to much now, to hurt myself any longer…

The room is now filled with smoke… I grope in the dark to find my bed… the darkness from my mind is now shed though, at least a bit….