True Love

You can't ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.

Tove Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley



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True love.



Everyone talks about love. Everyone wants to be loved and be in love, whether they admit it or not. I, the one in love with the notion of love, often writes and talks about love. All its whys and wherefores. In another one of those days, my girlfriends and I are caught up again in our talks about love, the casual ones and that true one.



I will strive to write my thoughts down and still create some semblance of reason despite the topic of love.



Last night, before I finally closed my eyes to sleep, I wondered briefly if I already became too cynical for love. I had dreams of a fairy tale kind of love, where my gallant Prince will sweep me off my feet, and we will fall perfectly in love. There'll be no problems because we'll be so in love, absorbed in each other to care much for reality. But of course, reality bites. And it bites hard. Fairy tales don't exist. Or they do, but they leave the bad parts out when they are telling it. They leave out the fact that not all loves ends in a romantic kiss and everyone will swoon while the two of you gallop and wave and disappear into the horizon to live happily ever after.



For me, it all started with my Chocolate Love Story. Everybody calls him my True Love. Like every young love, we started out as friends. Of course I blotched it all up by being a naive, hopelessly romantic girl who thought that if she does everything she can (note: be a certified stalker) to win his love, he's going to love her back. I was wrong. I thought there were all these signs that tells me we're made for each other. Yeah right.



It took me years to finally realize that accidentally seeing that we're wearing the same shirt at the same doesn't mean that we're destined to be together. That him working for a company in the same street as where I'm working for doesn't mean fate put us together again. And the two of us still single, and unattached again, after all these years, doesn't really mean we are the one for each other, but only that I'm picky and he's probably gay.



In a nutshell, I learned not to take 'signs' seriously, because when a person is in love, like I was before, we give ourselves our own made-up 'signs'. We ended up fooling ourselves. We have a distorted view of our situation and we are not a good judge of whether it is true love or not. Since then, I stopped saying, 'it's a sign!'



Then, there was the Dark Age of my life. My Black Knight. I seem to have the habit of falling for my guy friends, because we also started out as friends. This time, I gave my all. (For me, at least. Confessing I like someone right in his face already constitutes my 'all'.) I didn't recognize myself back then. I listened to jazz music, because that's what he likes. I walked from Citibank to Glorietta because he likes to walk. I stopped telling him what I read and what music I listened to because he thinks bestsellers are cheesy and pop music is crap. I began liking the things he like, doing the things he likes to do, and even believing the things he believed in, all because of love. I became somebody else, hoping being someone else who adores him and worships the ground he walks upon will get him to love me.



I lost myself for a while, began to hate him when I almost became his evil twin, his shadow and he still can't or won't love me the way I wanted him to. Of course, I began hating him. I also hate the person I'm becoming. I became some sort of monster, I created for him. And still, I didn't get what I was expecting. That hurts. I got tired of pretending, I got tired of being someone else, I got tired of loving too much and not getting what I wanted in return.



Maybe because I have nothing left that's why when I got so tired, I simply let go. It was one of the easiest thing I've ever done. It was a long tedious and difficult road before I decided, but once I did, it was so easy like you wouldn't believe. Maybe because I finally let go of the small hope, that belief deep inside me, that I keep to myself that he'll come to love me in the future. When I finally let that go, I was free.



Love became an ugly thing for me in the past. It consumed me, made me stupid, made me hate myself and turned me into somebody else. I gave everything and when he still didn’t want me, I had nothing left. I still bear the scars from that experience, I still sometimes fall into this black hole, the belief that I'm so insignificant and so unlovable that nobody can love me. But that is all my doing. He didn't do it to me, I did it to myself. I didn't love myself enough. How can he?



A friend said when she falls, she falls hard and gives everything. Like love justifies everything. No reason, no logic and nothing's wrong. It's love. Fatal Attraction and Psycho you can be, and still it's not wrong, it's just love.



Maybe before I will agree. Not now.



Love is beautiful, and grand, and it shouldn't turn you into somebody else. It shouldn't make you cry without lending a shoulder to cry on. It shouldn't make you do things that leaves you with nothing but an empty shell. It should make you fly, carrying you on its wings. It should make you laugh, smile and do cartwheels. It should inspire you to be your best self, and not an ugly, monstrous mirror image of your worst self.



I believe in love. I believe in True Love. But I believe in the love that sets me free, not the one that do worst for me. If that makes me a cynic, then go ahead, call me one. I just trust God enough to know that He loves me, He'll want me to love being Me, and will give me someone who'll love the whole Me too.



That's what I believe.