I Love You Right This Very Second

Do you believe in love?

Insta-love, that is.

It's one of the biggest complaints about YA and NA books. You know the set up. Vulnerable (or angry...or hurt...or other adjective) girl meets troubled but sensitive smokin' hot boy and they immediately fall in love.

I'll be the first to admit, the whole first meeting, “I've-just-met-you-but-I-love-you-and-want-to-marry-you” is a little over the top. OK, a lot over the top.

But the other kind of insta-love? The kind where two people meet and sparks fly and suddenly they can't keep their hands off of each other?

Is that believable?

Hell yes.

Because I've been there.

No, I'm not in my early twenties anymore (thank God). But I remember my teen years and my twenties like they were yesterday. And, trust me, I fell in love faster than ice cream melted in the San Diego sunshine.

That rush of emotions. Feeling like every nerve in your body is on fire the minute your new guy touches you, lays eyes on you. Wanting to spend every waking minute with him (and every other minute, too...). Setting absolutely everything in life aside for this one person, this person you just met a week ago.

Was I the only one this happened to??

Was I the only one who daydreamed about a future with every single guy I dated? Did anyone else go out on a date or hook up with some guy and then go home and practice writing out their last name...with your own first name? Mine sorta looked like this:

Anna Shelby

Anna Fernandez

Anna Westwood

Anna LeMare

I might have had relationships where someone whispered "I love you" a week after we met. And I might have whispered it back. Because even though there was no way I could genuinely know every facet of every one of my boyfriends-of-the-month (or week...or day...), I loved what I did know about him--what he looked like and how he made me feel.

Insta-love is one of the beautiful things about being young. It's about embracing—fully—every single thing that happens to you. Grabbing it and holding on and running at breakneck speed. And, no, it ain't gonna last. It won't sustain. It'll run out of gas.

But it's there.

And for those few hours...or days...or weeks...it's one hundred percent real love.

Insta-love might not be what lasting relationships and marriages are made of. But it's absolutely real.

And I plan to keep writing about it.