I keep thinking about this question "what is love ?" .. and the more I ask this of myself the more I come back to the answer that for me love is light. The absence of love is dark. But light can breach darkness and so it is with love too. 
It is easy to be loving on sunny days when the roses are blooming. But call me love when I am in tears, when I can see no further ahead than my next breath, call me love when I am storming and incensed, call me love when I am dull and despondent, call me love when I am failing, when I am fallen. Then I may know that you love me. And if I do the same for you then you too can know that I love you too. 
I am writing about love, and I feel a little schmaltzy, what do I know ? I only know what I know and what I know is incomplete. I am making a piece of work that I have been thinking about for three to four years since my last lover left me. I am nothing to him now, and he is just a long ago love that I no longer know. It is not only about him. But it is also about him.
His leaving forced me out of a life I had hoped I would live. I'd hoped we would travel together, explore, roam, wander, and make love all over the planet, make memories to share, memory jam for the store cupboard, I'd hoped we would make a garden or two together, learn to read the stars, I'd hoped to wake with him, not every morning but most mornings, until the day one of us died. I'd created a fairytale I guess, a wonderland, a castle of dreams but my dreams weren't his. One love has no right to bind another. He took his leave, I was not wanted, it hurt, it hurt a lot. But life goes on. 
Recently I came across a japanese proverb which goes "I fall down seven times, I get up eight". I like the simplicity of that and I think it is in essence is how I feel about love. It is a long path, a stream of light that stretches from before birth to after death, there will be rocks and obstacles, stumbles and falls, muddy ground and barren tracks, and it all depends on keeping going and getting back up when you fall. 
I think my thinking is still unfinished .. to be continued