LOVE IS... (For You Dear Rizza)

photo from the web

You know I seldom write about love these past months. One can scan through my journal and all she'll find are beginnings. I couldn’t finish one. No, I do not want to finish one. I go back to the old notes but none of them seem to awaken a familiar feeling anymore. Maybe it happens. Words somehow lose their meanings with time. One can relate though but the emotions that go with them when they first came to life are somewhere in the past. Lost. Void. Forgotten.

Then came the conversation last night. Defining the non-negotiables. Standing and never compromising. You shared your typical-girl-who-wants-to-be-in-love rants. Been there, done that (imagine me waving my hands, haha). Well, sometimes, I’m still in between. I float between the feeling of rushing into love and the feeling of waiting ‘til Mr. Right finds his way. Urrggh, the usual me :) But talking with you made me want to write about it again. Not in bits and pieces. I want to write it in whole this time. 

Perhaps, through this, you would know and you would understand why I’m giving love all the time it needs. And you would see that it’s taking a little longer than man’s own version of time. But still I resolve to wait and I hope you would do the same. ‘Til love, a God-send love hits us both dearest sis, straight from the heart. 

So here goes your back-from-hiatus-hopeless-romantic-joy. I’m not sure I can write it well but I will try, anyway. I guess the advantage of forgetting is being able to fill in the empty spaces with new love-perhaps, new love-hopes. Remembering only few from what I used to know gives me a wider view of what love is. 

Love is when I feel I’m at my best and I know he’s there and he comes and shakes my hand and he smiles. The ever prepared me will also smile, summon all the words I have rehearsed for long but will fail big time. The epic fail, I will unconsciously leave and soon regret that I did. Because the truth is, I can never be prepared for that moment. Every detail of it would be a delightful surprise. I will run out of words, I will get conscious, I might not even notice him at first or he may find me intimidating. But love, when he recognizes me, will pursue me, first from God. 

Love is one funny morning when he would come to my house and find me sipping coffee and talking with daddy. Shaking on the inside, he will sit with us and start stammering but will keep on trying until he finds his way to my father’s heart. It’s when I would take time to make coffee for him (oh I wish he loves coffee, too) while he bravely stands the man-to-man talk with dad. I will ask afterwards but he will just smile, and I, too, will smile. 

Love is when we disagree on many things and I make a resolve to get angry and stop talking to him. But not an hour will pass when my guards are down. And slowly, awkwardly, we break the silence and laugh as if nothing happened. Because love understands, it is ever patient and forgiving. 

Love is when the years have cooled down the ephemeral tickle of ‘I love you’, ‘I miss you’ and ‘wish you were here’ and we will both decide to stay and rediscover how it felt like when we first met. We will give in to temper at times and we would question why we wanted each other. But even that question will lead us to realizing the reasons love came in. And we will stay. And I love you, I miss you will again feel brand new. 

Love is when I watch him and my fears of the now and then and all the others in between melt away. It's not his promises, not his sweet nothings that will make me believe but it's the depth of his soul that comes bare when I look him in the eye. 

Love is when his muscles have been replaced with fats and when for me, 36-24-36 no longer applies. And still I call him handsome and he would say, “of course, that’s why you never stopped chasing me until I said yes.” And I would disagree. And he would call me beautiful, and I would answer, “you probably used a spell to make me marry you.” Then the teasing goes on. The children would find it corny and sweet. Just because when our lives begin again at 40, we see beauty in a whole new perspective: something more genuine, something more fascinating that emanates from the inside out. 

Love, when aging makes us forget, will be a silent, constant reminder that his story can never be told without Joy in it. Because love made us one and my story had become his. 

Love is, when I can write no more and death will take its toll, I have loved him, he has loved me. Utterly and purely. #

written 11.05.13