A Love Letter (If you don't want to waste your time, skip this one)

As a general rule, I don't write unless someone tells me I should. Not that I have any particular aversion to writing, but it just doesn't ever really come to mind. But. Of late, time has begun the inevitable long draw that passes somewhere after the climactic moment of the last episode, and somewhere before the beginning of the next.
You see, my We the People team (yes, it's an unfortunately ironic name, I agree) just won our state competition, which means I'm going to go visit Emily and Aditya in early May. This is a good thing to be sure, but most of you probably don't care, so I don't quite know why I'm telling you all this. Except that I feel somehow obligated to explain how I got into my present introspective predicament, and perhaps to provide some perspective.
When I am left with far too much time on my hands, as now, I confess I indulge rather excessively in personal reflection. I'm a very self-centered person as you can probably tell, so this should come as no surprise. At any rate, I am finally coming to the reason I decided to write this post: I think too much for my own good. There is a point at which the overwrought imagination of a hermetic youth turns into the angst-y quasi-philosophy of someone who never goes outside. I like to think this is what happened to Descartes. Why this matters to me, and more importantly, to you, is that this time I have decided to avail myself of the written word, and the resources of the most diverse, thoughtful pool of judges I could find. I will pretend that this exercise in futility will be somehow cathartic, and not, as I suspect, mournfully concupiscent with my ever-deepening spiral into the emo-crazy.

Once upon a time at TASP (and yes, Laura, this will sound familiar), I was asked the rather complex question, "What is love?" Seeing as how I had approximately a minute to respond (I get the sneaking suspicion that Aditya was playing tricks with the hands of the timer), I naturally chose to discuss 'surprise sex' and the implications thereof. This began a period of several months wherein the question remained lodged somewhere in my brain (I want to say medulla oblongata, because it sounds cool, but I really know nothing about neurology).
The next time it was brought to the forefront of my consciousness was during the TASPian New Year Extravaganza, when Gili, Laura and I watched Love Actually. It was the first time I had seen the movie, and I still can't decide if it's shockingly commercial, or adorably romantic, or possibly both. Again, totally pointless, but again, also to illustrate a point. Which is as follows: Love actually is all around.
So how do we determine which love is more legitimate than another, or if unconditional love is so unconditional, or if there is such a thing as love at all? I have no idea, really. I think perhaps my view is warped. Laura agrees with me. And here I resort to the opinions of mankind--or at least the opinions of my fellow TASPers, whose opinions are really the only ones I give a damn about. That was awful syntax, and I'm sure completely inappropriate for the English language, but I don't really care.
There are all kinds of love: a mother's love for her child, a child's love for its mother/father, a brother's love for his brother (or a sister's for her sister, and all the subsequent combinations), an individual's love for humanity, a lecherous old man's love for a little girl, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Most significant for me, why can love for a friend not be just as unconditional as that of a mother's love for a child? This truly bothers me. Even if friendship only lasts as long as two people live in the same county, how can the memories of that friendship be any less lasting than those of family? I think perhaps it is because I am and adopted child, filial and fraternal ties are considerably more insubstantial than those of friendship. It is not the family you came from, but the one you make, or something like that.
Love is supposed to be unconditional, but what the hell does that mean? If you were not who you are, I wouldn't love you? That makes no sense at all. I wouldn't be friends with any of you TASPers if it weren't for your amazing talents, but I wouldn't be my mother's child if she hadn't wanted kids so badly she went to Korea to find them. It seems to me that a person in love asks only that the beloved give everything of themselves to being loved. If that makes any sense at all. A mother desperately needs her child to be a child; otherwise, she couldn't be a mother.
I think what I'm trying to say is just that I really like having friends, even if only for a little while. Memories of love are more important than the real thing anyway. Reality is so bleak in comparison.
This all seems so terribly cliché and horribly foppish. I think I just spent a good hour or so (and wasted a whole bunch of your time, too, if you bothered to read this), writing a love letter to my TASPers. I just realized how horrifyingly long this post is, and how tremendously selfish it is of me to expect any of you to even want to read this. But I've already written it, and it's too late to turn back now. So please, comment if you want, call me a prat, tell me to stfu, or just ignore me. I just felt like having my say.