do you love?

i.
word of the day: "le coeur."
not to be confused or mispronounced as "le cul."
though sometimes "le coeur" is not far off from "le cul."
it's a matter of perspective.

ii.
the difference between what you thought love was at 19 and what you have come to think of it as at 23:

"it would degrade me to marry heathcliff now; so he shall never know how i love him: and that, not because he's handsome, nelly, but because he's more myself than i am. whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightening, or frost from fire."
- emily bronte; wuthering heights

"when you fall in love, my sister said / it's like being struck by lightening. / she was speaking hopefully, / to draw the attention of the lightening. / i reminded her that she was repeating exactly / our mother's formula, which she and i / had discussed in childhood, because we both felt / that what we were looking at in the adults, / were not the effects of lightening / but of the electric chair." - louise glück; "prism"

iii.
since you can remember, you've always asked yourself: "do you love?" never, "do you love him?" (m, r, b, etc...fill in said blank), but: "do you love?"
when referencing a feeling, it's best not to use names. names require specificity, hence thinking. generalizing is your safest bet and almost 99% of the time yields an affirmative response: "yes."