a late post

April 29, 2012

Songs, movies, poems, novels, blogs–a lot of these were inspired by love. A lot of these are about love. Some sing about being in love. Others write about the struggle of moving on. Other aspects include being frustrated because they can’t find anyone, unrequited love, missing someone so bad, etc etc. So many different stories of so many different people.  All, nonetheless, fall under love.

My priest friends say love is about giving yourself, sacrificing, selflessness blah blah, but when you think about it, love is probably the most selfish thing ever. We want someone to spend our lives with. We want to do things for them, and have things done for us. We want attention. We want to be appreciated.  Goddanggit, we want to be listened to. We want to be someone s/he can be proud of.
We want love. We need love.

What I learned these past months is that love is just love. You made a decision to love and you really can’t stop it. So you just love. You can never expect anything from the other person because no matter how much you love, no matter how badly you want things to be lovey-dovey, no matter how much you want a lot, you can never force someone to love you back. Or if that other person does love you back, you can never force him/her to love you the way you want to be loved. You can suggest, you can hint, but eventually the decision is up to the other person.

And how do you feel about that? You feel bad, you feel sad. You feel unwanted, unappreciated, not being listened to. You cry yourself to sleep. You feel that you are just an option, you are dispensable. And yet you can’t take that out on the other person because it was you who decided to love him/her. YOU who gave your heart and who took the leap. So what now? You get scared because things are not going your way. You get scared because no matter how much you shake it, you still feel dispensable, an option and not really a priority. You get more scared because you feel that you might not get what you want.

So what can you do? You cherish the amazingly good times – whether it’s something fancy or it’s just you and him/her beside each other, holding each other, talking about your future (or maybe laughing at your “blonde moments”). You make memories as much as you can. And take lots of pictures so you can have something to look back on.

You pray so hard for that other person to be safe and in good health always. You hope that the other person loves you as much and that s/he does not forget to do what you agreed on to make your relationship work. You hope and have faith that s/he is heading to the same direction as you. You have faith that things will fall into their proper places soon.

And the best thing to do?  You just love. And love some more. And continue to love. Without expecting anything in return (so hard to do).  You just love because you’re great at it. Because it’s the only thing you can do.

Just love.
Undeniably
Unavoidably
Inevitably
Everything boils down to love.