This entry is prompt #25 of The Book of Me, Written by You project

This week's prompt is – Love (I love you!)

• Love comes in varying shapes and sizes
• I love you
• I love ice cream
• I love the smell of rain, Spring, toast
• I love my (insert your family member, pet etc)
• There is no right or wrong way to love….or is there?
• Define what love means to you.

What does love mean to me? Love between two people is when you accept each other, warts and all, and that applies regardless of whether that is love between friends, family, partners or yourself. Love is all encompassing, a warmth and acceptance that makes you feel secure and safe. Love is unconditional. When you love someone, you love them despite everything.

It's only in recent years that I've come to realise what love truly is. So many times in the past I've thought I loved someone or I was loved or I was in love, but it always came with strings attached. In true love there are no strings.

Sometimes I have craved love, and I've put myself in dangerous positions as a result. Sometimes I thought I was unlovable.

Now I know what love feels like. Love is knowing whatever happens, you'll be there. Love is being supportive even when you don't agree. Love is deeper than any other feeling. Love is the most painful, joyful, in sense feeling one person can ever feel for another. True love is forever, and for never.

Some of the things I love:

I love my children

I love my man

I love my family

I love my cats

I love my closest friends

I love the sea

I love snugging up in bed

I love a good book

I love drinking tea

I love challenging myself, learning, discovering and exploring

I love myself, warts and all (though it's taken me a long time to be able to say that)

I love waking through woodland in winter

I love poppies

I love writing

I love being loved

I love the smell of freshly mown lawn

I love Cromer

I love being alive