Thursday, July 12, 2012 @ 6:19 AM

The night before I left Korea, my uncle sat me down and lectured me about love. At first I was taken aback by this abrupt topic since not even my parents ever went in too deep about love or even emotions that might arise during my adolescence. To put it simply, everything he said—as much as I'd hate to believe it—felt as if it were the truth. Every word he spoke that night was wrapped with ache and sincerity. I felt it coming from deep within his heart with hope that I'd understand and avoid facing the experiences he had once faced as a naive child.

He said that without pain, love does not exist. Not merely a tinge of pain, but absolutely excruciating pain, the type of pain that suffocates your heart, chokes your throat, and controls your thoughts. If there is that kind of pain resting in your heart, that's when you're certain that your love is real.

Love isn't sweet. It isn't all about happiness, he said.

While he was lecturing me on this, all that flashed by in my mind was my past. I'd already felt the pain he was describing. I had fully experienced it before, it wasn't new. The only thing I felt was sadness approaching me as this realization came into picture. I didn't want to believe that I had ever loved that kid. I wanted to forget the entire thing in disbelief. But everything he had said that night was clarification that opposed to what I wished I could believe.