Lovesick - How does being moonstruck works

It is hard to be in Love, no, I'm not talking about the cliche I'm talking about the polysemy behind it.
"To be in Love" is "hard" from the verb "I finished 5 papers in 6 days, I haven't slept in 6 months". Hard; really, really hard.

But it'd be unfair (or at least incomplete) to consider Love as a mere hormonal overdose. Being in Love is, above all things, waiting. The same kind of patience that was left behind in the bottom of the Pandora's Box, because it was waiting what was needed, not hope.
Wait for him/her to call back, wait for him/her to look at you, wait for that "good morning" message every day, wait for a "hello", an emoji, ANYTHING. Wait for it.

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For our brain, to wait is named dopamine and it has to do with the neural circuit of reward, and the amazing thing about it is that it revolves around the expectation more than around the achievements.
Barthes interpreted that as something like "being slave of a phone that never rings", I am not sure how much of "neuro" did he know... But he did know that as soon as that phone rang: The party started.

Right there is where we strike "hard" again, because that same circuit dopamine touches is also touched by cocaine, crack and freebase preventing it from being reabsorbed once it is released. She/He, instead, with his/her awful clothes selection that looks great on him/her... Just increase the release of dopamine into our system.
The thing is that the effect is very similar, the same rearrangement of priorities that lead us into performing stupid feats, the same anxiety, euphoria and pain whenever a "no" pops up.

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At some point, we started "disrespecting" nature and ruining the magic behind it, and we always ended up finding: Even more magic.
Helen Fisher, an anthropologist obsessed with Love to the point that she attempts to look at it from under a sociologist's scope to a molecular physiologist's one (stepping on every science she could find in between), decided that it was a great idea to stick people in love inside a functional Magnetic Resonance machine (fMRI for those that have google at another tab). After that experiment she noticed that a renowned place in our head known as "ventral tegmental area of Tsai" lit up like Las Vegas looked from a satellite during nighttime, and triggered dopamine flows for everyone! therefore, Love and Lusty.
But, the most interesting cases were not the happy ones, the broken hearts were...

Since they did not have enough with "not having", now they willingly exposed themselves to depression for the sake of science, they stuck their heads inside a huge machine so that we could map their lack of satisfaction, the positive side of this is that the data was way more interesting, less obvious. The brain of the broken hearts, lit up even MORE. "That" love was expectations, waiting, the impossibility to fulfill is the same that putting out a fire with gasoline; today, we've scientific evidence that proves that unilateral loving is even stronger than mutual Love.

To mess it up, even more, that same area in the brain that regulates expectations ends up defining a lot about motivation, perseverance,our will to chase that unreachable objective. But, we are what we are -and- our circumstances, and this is something that is discussed with a group of neurons called "nucleus accumbens", that has a lot of weight in the decision making of high risk tasks. A person in Love is not only obsessive and focused, it is also able of taking considerable risks for potentially important rewards. This is: Dangerous, crazy.

Since we learn how to speak, we speak about Love. We write tales, songs, poems, symphonies (even carve public bathroom doors and trees!) for the sake of Love. Today, we took a scalpel and attempted to meddle around a deeper level of "understanding" (?). And we did (kinda).

We live holding the privilege of being able to reply to "do you Love me?" with Medical Imaging, we morbidly justify and even thank her/him for "not calling"; because, deep within ourselves, it is the only way we can Love him/her even more.
Now, I am able to understand more about that perpetual sunset in my brain that is nothing more than smoke and mirrors imposed by my own system, able to cherish the mathematical ratio between hips and waistline.
It is one of two choices, either that or ask myself who spent years experimenting to explain "Love" when a phone rings"...

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The weird thing is, even understanding that evolution is "cheating" on us... As soon as the phone rings, my face lights up like Las Vegas with power surge.