To be Loved is to be Changed
May 6, 2024
Writer: Sydney Holzman
Editor: HY Editors
“To be loved is to be changed:” a quote that popped up on my TikTok feed and has resonated with me since. The notion that love isn’t just a feeling but an active force that shapes us is exhilarating; it suggests we are like a mosaic, where each piece represents someone or something we have loved.
Sure, my first boyfriend, in our naive perspectives of love, changed me, or so I was convinced. My crush started in fifth grade and lasted through school dances and dates accompanied by our mothers. Maybe it changed me, maybe it didn’t, but the love we shared now exists solely within the lines of sealed letters piled up in my childhood house, tucked under the bed where I first read them.
The boys I have since professed my love for seemed to change me, or so I thought they did. Except for the most significant one, with whom I experienced my first heartbreak, I realize now that none of them left lasting impacts beyond the effortless exchange of those three words.
I have come to understand that platonic love–the love shared between my family and friends–is the love that has truly changed me for the better.
To be loved by my childhood best friend is to know the comfort of unwavering companionship. At the age of five, she taught me the essence of friendship, and she never let my twenty-year-old self forget it. Each time she’s my first call after a major accomplishment or minor inconvenience, my perception of those eight letters deepens. To be loved by her is to relive all our trials and triumphs together. It is being stuck in a permanent honeymoon phase: fifteen years and only one fight. It is to remember as many details about her life as mine. To be loved by her means receiving and maintaining my three favorite nicknames, one from each generation of her family. To be loved by my childhood best friend is to be changed.
To be loved by my two high school best friends is to be loved by my soulmates. In seventh grade, most of what I knew about love came from the movies I watched. I believed I had one soulmate who I would magically find and marry. Two years later, I would meet my soulmates in the least magical way and with no intentions of marriage. The three of us complement each other perfectly. To be loved by them is to be loved unconditionally. It’s understanding quality over quantity is optimal when it comes to friendship. I have learned the most about those three words through every mess they’ve helped me clean up, never uttering a “we told you so,” even though they invariably do. Through their love, I have learned never to leave the house with my nails undone, to pet every dog in my path, and to know the value of a stuffed animal or pint of (vegan) ice cream in times of need. To be loved by my high school best friends is to be changed.
To be loved by my college friends is to turn a foreign place into a home. It’s asking strangers, friends, children, boys at bars, and professionals for their roses, buds, and thorns of the day. Being loved by them is knowing what it means to be fiercely loyal. Their love is squeezing a hand or making eye contact that conveys a million words. They’ve shown me how to be vulnerable in ways my younger self would have cringed at. It is a love potent enough to turn four walls shared between strangers into a safe place with my other half. This love is strengthened by every trip to Yogurtland, game of “boom-it,” and obnoxiously loud morning debrief. Loving them is to have a home in a group of humans. To be loved by my college best friends is to be changed.
For me and all of us, love is to embrace change. It is witnessing our mosaics evolve under the indelible influence of those who embody the weight of those eight letters and three words: “I love you.” This impact ensures we are forever altered by their presence in our lives.