Love - The definition is ?

Had never asked myself the question, what was love to me. Well until a boy who didn't love me, turned around one day and told me, "Love should be effortless". I did not know what that meant then and not sure what that means still.

Growing up no one tells you what love is. You assume what you get from the parents is the perfect example because who else could love you more than the people who gave birth to you. Well mine had a rough ride while they raised me and so the definition of what I grew up with was very different. My definition was if you work hard enough and prove that you are good enough, you will get the attention and hence the love. Never occurred to me that love should be unadulterated, the kind I received from grandfather where no matter what I did, he was there for me. 

After he left, the concept of love kind of disappeared somewhere in my head. I worked to earn friends and the men in my life. I tried hard to be the versions that they wanted me to be, the versions that were useful to them, the versions that never asked for anything but gave all that she could in return. Slowly that is what love started to mean in my head. If you work hard enough to be a good kid, maybe the parents will pay attention to you or if you work hard enough to be a good girlfriend, the guy would turn around and tell me he cared for me as much as I did. 

Well all the people in my life proved my definition wrong. No matter how hard I worked for them, I was or am never a high priority in their lives. A difficult lesson to learn very late in your life cause you start questioning every relationship in your life and recognise you haven't had that effortless love in a very long time and you don't even remember what it feels like anymore. Well someday, there will be people who turn around and will be there for me, no matter what I do for them and then maybe I can rewrite my definition of love again. 

It never occurred to me that the man who treated me like a bad story and hid me from all would teach me the definition of what love really meant. The kind of love that Rumi has for Shams, the total kind expecting absolutely nothing in return, the effortless one.