Is love real?

[Angrboda]

As I lay listening to a romantic song while lying in bed, a line in that song stuck out for me.

"I still carry a flame for you
Burnin' me like a brand"

And it made me remember that the idea of such passionate feelings that they're physically painful has always struck me as something alien.

I've never felt things that way, toward a lover, a friend, or even, not romantically, but an upwelling of feeling toward family.

Even the woman who I in hindsight think was probably "the one" and who I now realize that I loved deeply never provoked such sentiments.

I've always explained it away as being just me. I've always been a loner and somewhat cold and distant, taking after my father who influenced me more than my mother.

And a lifetime of depression, on top of being raised in the shadow of two sisters who were palpably more loved than I, has left my emotional circuits somewhat dead.

But I still wonder to this day whether love isn't more myth than reality, at least the feeling of it.

Which leads me to wonder, is love real?