The last time I can say that I've "been in love" is probably in high school, during my sophomore and junior year. I guess the more appropriate expression might have been "obsession," but I was a teenager with a messy life and poor way of expression.
And if I think about it, every time that I've "been in love," it's been closer to "obsession." I became incessantly worried about pleasing the other person and doing everything it takes to satisfy them, and if I ever did something wrong that seemed to make them upset or think of me as an annoyance, I'd worry myself over it for days, wondering, "Why did I do that? I'm so stupid." And in the process of "loving" those people, I came to hate myself.
And I keep writing "in love" with quotes around it because I don't think "being in love" should have made me feel like that. I thought "being in love" was supposed to be a warm, fuzzy experience, not this feeling of being constricted into a smaller and smaller being.
Or maybe I just had the wrong impression as to what "being in love" should be since the beginning. Maybe I just had an expectation that could never happen in reality.
So this "being in love" thing, I don't think I've ever done it properly. But sometimes I get this weird, unfamiliar sensation in my chest that feels strangely like being wrapped tightly around with fluffy blankets in a warmly lit room, maybe with a fireplace blazing somewhere in the background, and I wonder if this time, I'm doing it right.