Love Starts Young

Love Starts Young

McKenna Romick, Staff Writer

“Where there is love there is life.” by Mahatma Gandhi. Young girls fantasize about finding their prince charming while young boys imagine slaying the big purple and red dragon to save their princess. High schoolers constantly hear older generations mumbling and nagging about how they can’t possibly know what love is. They are too young to even think about being in love. Single adults from coast to coast question if they will ever conquer love, settle down, and start their family. I am a seventeen year old girl with many more years to gather notes on love but I believe that love starts young.

When I was born until I was going into 5th grade my parents, my two brothers, and I all lived in a little white house just a few miles north of small town Alliance Nebraska. Our little white house sat right next to a highway. We called and still do call that house the “Highway House”. The Highway House is where I was taught to love. I first fell in love with my brother who is three years older than me. We would run all through the house with our tiny muddy boots from corn field right behind our house. He was my best friend and I looked up to him like he hung the stars in the sky. I was five years old the second time I fell in love at the Highway House. The day my parents brought my little brother home. A new brother overwhelmed me but as his little toes would wiggle I could not help but fall for him deeper and deeper. When my parents brought him home I had to share a room with the little stinker until I was big enough to sleep in the basement. A few years past and my mom said we were gonna paint the second bedroom in the basement just for me! It was baby blue with a white picket fence and flowers painted as tall as I was bordering of the room. I was obsessed with my new dream room.

I feel like it was just yesterday I was in love with a flower covered room and now I am in love with so much more. High school came fast and is going by even faster. When I hear someone say highschoolers are too young to know what love is I kind of giggle because how can we be too young when we have been falling in love with things for as long as we can remember? Plus love is everywhere! Love is in books, movies, songs, all over social media. “The Fault in Our Stars”  by John Green is a perfect example. It was nominated #1 New York Times Bestseller and #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller. Entertainment weekly wrote “The greatest romantic story of this decade” all on a book about two teenagers who fall in love. A book that was extremely successful but yet teenagers are only allowed to learn about love not pursue it.

Yet, in this society you can’t wait too long to find love because if you do not have your whole life squared away at a certain age you start to get stereotyped into the category of a crazy cat lady. Someone who might gain weight, be alone forever, and own lots and lots of cats. I have an aunt in her early thirties, who is single, lives in Portland Oregon, and sends me letters all the time about how she feels like she won’t ever conquer love. What she doesn’t understand is that she already has. She loves her job, her house, and she is living in her dream town. We have all conquered love. I have no personal experience of what it is like to be in love at an older age because I am not there yet but I have watched movies about adults struggling to find love. “Can I Have Your Number” is one of my favorite romantic comedy movies. The main actress believes that she is never going to fall in love with the right guy as her mother bothers her and bothers her to get married.

When you are young you dream about prince charming or cinderella. As you grow up you dream about finding someone that you fit in with and that adults won’t roll their eyes as they walk by because teenagers know nothing about love. Eventually, getting even older but not too old to find someone to start a family and spend forever with. No matter what age, what shoe size, or what height I believe love starts young. It is not about finding the right one to love all your life. It is to “fall in love with as many things as possible” – Unknown