Frankly Put: Welcome to Love v.5
Every year since I started doing this writing on Love, I keep wondering how I am going to execute it differently every time. Last year it was a poem. Maybe I can try write about it in the general sense.
I’m reflecting on it now, how it feels like the perception of love has since switched from the start of this series to now. I mean what does love look like as a young adult? Well, I’ll tell you the tunnel from “You don’t know love” to “How do you know it is a love worthy of marriage?” is a steep hill. It feels like one trips at the top and for quite a while you are falling — you don’t even notice what’s going on around you.
It just comes as a surprise that suddenly, the people with whom you are talking about wanting to be single are now sending you mail with “Save the Date" printed in large fonts. You go from processing heartbreaks and vetting dates you went on for free food and vibes to dancing with the old ladies of the house to welcome your peers in traditional ceremonies.
That is a very rude wake up call. A slap with reality that only really stings when you find yourself sitting at the table with faces that long lost their childish features. Naivety having been ripped ruthlessly from the topic, in the way we speak about it to each other. The “break-up” solution not being thrown around so callously. How we have turned love over and over on our frying pan to make sure it is cooked, through and through.
Actually, it’s in this space where love was thrown in with spices that made me rethink my flavour palette. At least, around the topic that is a story of unrequited love. It is always seen to be toxic but perhaps it is a breath of fresh air in some spaces. How it is conditioning to the heart that love is a muscle that can be trained. That you can have the thrill of waking up without the high stakes of mutual connection. That delusion could be a recovery room for healing hearts. Perhaps, it isn’t all negative because it works for some and somehow that exercise made them better lovers.
It forced them to temper expectations. It made them look deep into their souls for answers on how they show up. It made them question the characters they claimed to have fallen for and they were grateful. Listening and not judging with young eyes really humbles you sometimes.
Now you are sitting here learning how to wear the vulnerability of love even when it is unrequited. Navigating your own biases of how loving someone should look and feel. Fighting a losing battle to define the fence you built around your heart after one too many rejections. Facing the versions of you that needed love, the versions that didn’t know they needed love, the versions of you that knew love and demanded it.
How do you face yourself in the mirror and tell yourself this is the one that will feed me until my dying day? Are you even the kind of person to sit through one source of romantic love until death? Are you fair in your belief in reciprocating when yours is punctured with an expiry date? Hard questions, hard questions. These questions seek answers nonetheless. Lucky for you and me, we get to walk in and out of the exam room as many times as necessary to ensure when time is up, we are satisfied with the answer on the page.
Still, love with age us. Love will age with us. No matter how many times we write an answer and erase it off the page. Its traces carry on and shape a perspective inevitably. Imaginations of an old, slow love turn from delusion into a goal with actionable steps.
Suddenly the future of love doesn’t feel so far away. The morning coffee together, in the silent glow of the rising sun. No rush to get anywhere. The remembering of the little charms; a single rose, a half-eaten box of chocolate, a note written with shaky handwriting, old photographs.
It’s in building traditions that only make sense to the two of you. The never having to explain your little quirks again. The routines are built around one another’s little idiosyncrasies. Perhaps growing old and in love isn’t such a bad goal to put on your vision board. If it persists, let it.
Delusions are tracing the space between the black and white with love. Welcome… to Love v.5, to put it Frankly.
