I will never forget what my father told me about love: “[It is] never figured out by anyone. For thousands and thousands of years, love is the subject in question.” The 43,941 quotes (as of writing) about love in Good Reads alone shows how crazy we are with love and how it makes us crazy.
The idea of love was not something I entertained. Then somehow, in the shifts and tides I got into, I collided with love. I admit: I went bananas and everything I knew flipped over. No love quote could explain how I felt.
It was two and a half years ago. I remember lying awake on my bed way past midnight, my phone and right ear still warm from the hours-long phone call that just dropped, an overwhelmingly rich warmth flooding in me. Although I’ve never felt it before, it was so familiar, and I instinctively knew that it was love. I was in love. I was so in love with the person I was on the phone with for hours and hours in a day. I remember sheepishly smiling in the dark, gingerly soaking in my feelings bubbling over. My phone vibrated on my chest. I answered the call. We talked until I fell asleep.
Falling in love converted my romantic-love-doubter self into a vat of goo and mush. My resistance faltered and shortly I gave in to all things sappy: to intertwine my fingers with those fingers, write poems and letters for those eyes I adore so much, to admire the way that head of hair reflects sunlight when the sun is about to set and how they tousle when the wind blows, to know and memorize how many kinds of smiles those lips make. It felt criminal, but only because it showed me how much of a romantic I am. It was an unraveling that made my fragments clear, easier to put together. With loving, I felt I cracked the puzzle that is myself.
My love was requited to boot! Our friends would ask how in the world we were so happy. They would tell us we light up into an inexplicable shine. At a young age, I found what people spend a lifetime looking for.
However.
It ended.
I turned into a heap of mess dumped on my sheets, my face burning and swollen from all the crying. Once whole, my pieces were torn asunder. The pain that crippled me emotionally and mentally became so much that my chest would physically feel like it’s breaking apart. I was traveling in the speed of light, in all its glory, and then suddenly I crashed. It felt like a part of me suddenly withered and died. Suddenly, the world turned sour and grey, the birds were not singing in celebration of anything anymore, and sunlight in the morning felt like it was going to burn me. Nothing — not one love quote, rom-com, afternoon soap opera, advice, or love poem — prepared me for the crash.
Jeremy Clarkson said, “Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that’s what gets you.” In one of those nights that I lay as a brokenhearted mess on my sheets, I knew: love is not killing me; it’s the end.
But I learned that feelings don’t become stationary. Love, in all its glory, will skid through the tracks even if the break is pulled. It will drag on. The full stop comes way later on, which could mean months or years or a lifetime. I have come far enough to conclude that love is alive on its own and will fight for its life. Don’t trust the infamous three-month-post-break-up rule, nor that moving on will and should happen at the time equal to the half-life of the relationship. I know this because it’s been two years and I still feel something.Love became pain, too. I wrote: “How can you be my wound and bandage at the same time?” I relish the love I feel, yet it tortures me. I spoke to my best friend about this, and she said that humans are born masochists when it comes to love, and then arrived to the conclusion that we are born with the innate readiness to be under so much pain just for it. But why would an organism with the innate will to survive have the innate readiness for this?
I found myself at the point where I started to feel resentment. No, it was not petty bitterness because of could-have-beens, nor what-ifs. During the process of moving on, I wrote: “I don’t want to empty / a bottle of vodka / to give these roses / a place to stay.” Love became toxic. Loving felt like self-destruction. Shakespeare would nod: there is tragedy in love.
But.
Despite everything, I learned that moving on is not equal to losing all feeling and suddenly burying all the memories. Moving on is accepting. And that’s exactly what I feel: I’ve made peace that we ended, and it is okay; the love is still here and I still remember so much vividly, and it’s okay. Accepting and being at peace with the storm became the key to pacifying it. Hurting started to hurt less. My wounds started to heal. It took two years for me to learn this. Putting myself together is becoming less of war and depending on things external. It took two years for me to learn this, but it’s taking longer to finish. But I don’t mind.
As you can see, my collision with love was a mess. It was not so fruitful either because I was not able to map all there is to know about it. I bet the resulting wisdom and knowledge from experience were still little for me to figure it all out, but that’s okay. I’m starting to accept that love will always be the subject in question.
Ms Lipas is an average girl that sprouted in the South and currently brewing in the United Arab Emirates. Not single origin. During a motivational talk in Graphika Manila, she decided to leave Visual Arts and fall in the arms of Language. She is now a few shakes away from her degree in English. After being kept by her fluctuating self-esteem, this is her first time to get published.
