I used to think love was supposed to be free.

Not free in the sense that it required nothing. I knew love demanded time, attention, patience. But I thought the important part was that you gave those things willingly. You didn't calculate them. You didn't keep a receipt.

Then I grew older.

And I began to wonder whether love has a price after all.

I have watched people fall in love and lose sleep over each other. I have watched friends abandon their own happiness trying to keep someone else's. I have seen people forgive things they swore they never would, simply because the person who hurt them was someone they loved.

And I have wondered:

How much are we supposed to pay for love?

Is it our time?

Our pride?

Our independence?

Our peace?

How much of ourselves can we give away before there is nothing left to call our own?

Perhaps that's why love frightens me.

Not because I think love is weak.

Because I think it is powerful enough to make a person willingly surrender things they would never surrender to anyone else.

We spend our entire lives building ourselves.

We develop opinions. Dreams. Boundaries. Habits. A sense of who we are.

And then one day, someone comes along.

Suddenly, their happiness matters to you almost as much as your own.

Their sadness becomes your sadness.

Their absence changes the shape of your day.

You begin making decisions with another person's existence somewhere in the equation.

And nobody even forces you to.

You simply do it.

Perhaps that is the strangest thing about love.

You pay because you want to.

But sometimes I wonder whether we romanticize the price.

We say things like, “I'd do anything for you.”

But should we?

Should love really require everything?

If someone asks you to abandon your dreams, is that love?

If someone makes you smaller so they can feel bigger, is that love?

If you constantly have to sacrifice your dignity just to keep someone beside you, is that love?

I don't think so.

Maybe love is expensive.

But perhaps we have misunderstood what the price is supposed to be.

Love should cost something.

Otherwise, perhaps it isn't love at all.

It should cost time. Because if you love someone, you make room for them.

It should cost vulnerability. Because you cannot truly love someone while keeping every door locked.

It should cost forgiveness. Because two imperfect people will eventually hurt each other.

It should cost courage. Because loving someone means accepting the possibility that they may one day leave.

But love should not cost your entire self.

You should not have to disappear in order to prove that you care.

And perhaps that's the distinction we forget:

Love asks for sacrifice. It does not ask for self-destruction.

I think about this sometimes when I imagine what it would feel like to finally be loved by someone who understands me.

Someone who knows the things I don't usually say.

Someone who understands why I think so much, why I question everything, why sometimes I would rather sit quietly beside someone than speak.

Would I be willing to change for her?

Probably.

Would I give things up?

Of course.

But I hope that if I ever love someone that deeply, she won't ask me to become someone else to keep her.

And I hope I won't ask the same of her.

Because maybe the most beautiful kind of love isn't two people completing each other.

Maybe it is two complete, imperfect people choosing each other anyway.

Not because they need to possess one another.

Not because they are terrified of being alone.

But because, out of all the lives they could live, they decide that they would rather share some of theirs together.

So, is love really that expensive?

Yes.

But perhaps the price isn't suffering.

Perhaps the price is simply caring enough for another human being that their existence begins to matter to you.

And if that's the price---

maybe some things are worth paying for.

I tell myself everyday that I don't need people. That I am better off alone. That being alone is fun and exciting. Until it hits 10 pm. Until, I realize my phone is dry. My family asleep. And music fading in the background. That is when I realize, I may not want people. But I need them.

And I think that is a part of my problem. There's things I need, that I really can't admit to.

Is this too much for a 15 year old like me? Or am I just overreacting?

I have come across many hideous theist arguments, but none of them were as nasty as this one.

Personal Experience? Are you serious?

You telling me you believe in god because you saw him in your dreams? Well, I saw batman, spiderman and superman in my dreams. Then the marvel universe must be true.

I hate it when theist step up in a public professional debate, only to say "Personal Experience". Trust me people, if the crowd was full of philosophers, they would kick you off the stage.

The worst part is, everyone, I mean every theist I have encountered always gives the same answer."Oh, but you haven't seen god because you don't believe in him. If you trust him enough and worship him, he will definitely appear to you." That is what theists say.

I have seen devotees in churches, mosques, temples. People that devoted their entire lives, decades to god. They loved nothing else ever, except the love of god. And they too honestly confess, that they have never seen god.

Even then, personal experience could be explained by a lot of scientific theory as well. There's this one theory that says, if you believe something long enough, you start to accept it. You keep saying,"Yes, its true. Yes its true." Then one day you will be absorbed into that belief. You will start believing it is absolutely true because that is what you have believed all your life.

Then you start believing what you see. Not because it's true, but because your mind wants it to be.

Theists often say that if there is no god, then life has no objective purpose or meaning. Then, we are just random mass of atoms and molecules with a mix of biology.

But philosophers also argue that meaning is actually not something objective, but it is subjective and relative. For someone, meaning can be defined by a variety of things - Love, growth, improvement, exploration, reading, learning, or pretty much anything.

People argue that meaning does not have one single definition, it is because they say it changes according to people. In other words, meaning is not something the universe has defined. As if you have meaning only if you do these particular things.

But then I started thinking, what is meaning? I picked up a bottle and asked,"Does this have any meaning?" If it does, then humans can definitely create meaning on their own.

Thinkers also argue that humans can create meaning, but it is almost negligible compared to the universe, so they basically do not matter. Maybe you found the love of your life, you are happy that you gave your life meaning. But the universe does not care. After you die, no one will care if you actually met your woman.

Or maybe, simply, our lives do not have any meaning without god. It is meaningless. Whether you talk to that one person or get a better physique, it doesn't matter. Then there is no point in doing anything at all. It just turns into absolute nihilism.

So the question at the end of the day is this, What is meaning?