Frostbite.

As I have stated before, I live in Florida. The Sunshine State. Where it never snows. As such, I am quite accustomed to warm weather. I can wear jeans and a hoodie when it's 80 degrees out, and in fact did for the majority of middle school. (I was still figuring out who I was.) I mean, I have a tolerance for some cold, in short bursts, perhaps when it's still early morning and the sun hasn't risen, or maybe on a rare day when it stays cold all day and it's necessary for me to actually search for a shirt with sleeves that reach all the way to my wrists.

That was then. Now I have moved into northern Florida for college, where apparently the weather is much more brutal. I woke up yesterday for the first day of classes and checked the weather app on my iPhone. It was currently 32 degrees outside, but it felt like 22. I contemplated dropping the class, but begrudgingly realized that "I would have died of cold" would not have gone well with my parents as to why I lost my scholarships, dropped out of school, and moved back in with them forever.

I blow dried my hair. Not for any sake of fashion, but because although arriving to class with icicles on my hair might look surprisingly like dreadlocks, I felt it was not the best thing for my health. I did put on multiple layers of clothes. Florida jeans are made to be worn in the summer and not overheat. As such, they aren't good for the winter. In fact, they are completely useless in the winter. So I wear leggings under them to make up for this fact. It might help more if the leggings in Florida weren't made to be worn in the summer and not let you overheat.

Today, it is 33 degrees out, and it feels like 33, since there is no wind. In fact, according to the app, the wind is CALM at calm mph. That is great to know. I'll go prepare for that immediately.

Love.

Love. There a thousand directions in which a blog on this topic could go. I'll start by saying that in other languages, there are often multiple translations for our version of love, referring to different types of love. Isn't it odd that we use the same word to describe scenarios ranging from someone with whom we want to spend the rest of our lives to a tasty meal which we found quite pleasing to the palette?

In my last blog, I touched--merely touched--on the topic of love for family and friends, about both of which I could write books and still never fully explain. However, today I want to touch on the topic most commonly portrayed by the media and most pressed upon our minds since we were first old enough to watch movies: I guess I'll call it relationship love for lack of a better term.

See, from what I've been taught my whole life in movies--fairy tales, chick flicks, even comedies--is that two people meet and realize they are attracted to each other, physically emotionally, maybe they initially hate each other even, it's not too important. In the course of the next small time period, there is an obstacle to this love. However, they are both amazingly able to overcome this, and you have true love! Applause and tears, that's how to find a soulmate.

Of course, everyone always mocks this. Everyone seems to know this is a farce, that love can't be that way, but deep down it's still difficult for me to overcome this mindset, that love should be full of turmoil but resolution, constantly full of the butterflies in the stomach and jitters and whatever else they portray. I think that many people, even if they openly know the movie love isn't true love, still seem to search for that feeling in life. I know I do. But any relationship I've ever been in lost that feeling eventually. And then I wonder why I looked to the media when one of the more true examples of love has been in front of my face just as long.

My parents were married some years before I was born. As long as I've been alive, they've been together. They seem to enjoy each other's company; they have such goofy jokes and sometimes my brother and I just roll our eyes to see them together, singing or some other nonsense. The little quirks that all families have. Also, though, like I'm sure everyone does in their lifetime, they've been known to fight on occasion. I'm sure I don't even know the worst of it, but I'm willing to bet at times they have been so angry with each other that at least one of them has wanted to walk out.

"Love is not a feeling; it's an ability." That was a quote in a movie. I, however, beg to differ. While I agree that love is not the emotion we make it out to be, I say rather than ability, love is a decision, love is a choice. No matter how my parents have ever felt towards one another, whether happy or angry or sad or disappointed or overjoyed, they have always made the decision to still be there, for better or for worse, through good times and bad, through whatever life threw at them. The choice to stay together, to still live together and function together, that's what love is. Any movie that shows love as the resolution after one conflict has only scratched the surface. I think love is so much more deep and so much more true than that.

Mom, Dad, I love you both very much. You two have helped show me more clearly that anyone else can a depth of love that movies or stories or music can't even touch on. Thank you for that.