WHY IS IT CALLED LOVE?

I have asked myself this question too many times, but each time I ask, the answer feels different. Sometimes it feels like love is a soft song sung only for me, other times it feels like a storm breaking everything I thought was strong inside me. Why is it called love? The word sounds so simple, so easy to hold, yet the weight of it is greater than anything else I have known.

My name is Victor Ojay, and I am still searching for what this word truly means. Not the dictionary meaning, not the sweet coated phrases that poets have painted for centuries, but the raw experience of it as it enters the heart and refuses to leave.

When I was younger, love was fun. It was laughter in places that did not deserve laughter. It was stolen glances across classrooms, secret smiles in church pews, late night messages that carried no responsibility but carried so much joy. In those moments, I never thought of love as something heavy. I thought it was a game of butterflies, something you could play when you wanted, then put aside when you grew tired.

I remember a girl in my neighborhood who became my first silent crush. She never knew what she carried in my chest. I would watch her walk down the street with her schoolbag swinging, and I would feel something I could not name. Was that love? Back then, I believed it was. My friends would laugh and tease me, and I would deny it with all the power in my voice, but inside I knew my heart was hiding her name. It felt fun. It felt light. It felt safe.

But love, I have learned, does not stay light forever. It grows. It changes. It begins to ask for things you did not think it would. It asks for trust, for patience, for sacrifice, for forgiveness. It asks for your soul sometimes. And when you begin to give, you realize that love is not a game at all.

The first time I truly felt the weight of love, it broke me in ways I did not expect. I met someone who did not just make me laugh, she made me think about myself differently. She made me dream of places I had not yet reached. Her voice could calm storms inside me, and her smile could wake up light even in my darkest hours. I thought that was the answer to my question. I thought, finally, this is why it is called love. Because it transforms the ordinary into something sacred.

But what do you do when the same love that lifts you also teaches you pain? One day she was there, and the next she was gone. Not gone as in death, but gone as in absence, gone as in silence. That was when I realized that love is not only joy. It is also loss. It is waiting for a message that never comes. It is searching for eyes that once looked at you with fire, only to see them now looking away as if you are invisible.

I carried that pain for months. I carried it in my prayers, in my sleepless nights, in the songs I avoided listening to. I thought love had betrayed me. But looking back now, I know it was never betrayal. It was love showing me its other face, its harder truth.

So here I am, still asking. Why is it called love? Why do we give it so much power? Why do we allow it to break us and heal us all at once? Perhaps it is because without it, life feels empty. Without it, the world is just noise. With it, even silence becomes meaningful.

Tonight, as I sit by my window, I can hear the sound of the city around me. Cars pass, voices rise and fall, and somewhere far away someone is laughing. I think about how many people right now are in the arms of someone they love, and how many are crying because of love that slipped away. It amazes me how the same word can carry both heaven and hell in it.

I wonder if one day I will stop asking. I wonder if one day I will meet someone who will make the question unnecessary. Maybe love is not meant to be defined. Maybe it is only meant to be lived. And maybe, just maybe, I have not yet lived enough of it to understand.

For now, I will keep writing, I will keep searching, and I will keep feeling. Because even in my confusion, I cannot deny that love still calls to me. It is still the one thing I cannot run from, no matter how many times it hurts me.

And so my story begins here, with a question that refuses to leave my heart. Why is it called love? I do not have the answer yet, but I am willing to go through everything it takes to find it.