This Is For Everyone That Thinks Love Sucks

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To the boys who broke buckets of sweat for a girl who didn’t reciprocate. To the girls who were left hanging out to dry. To the ones who are still trying to piece their hearts back together, years later. And to every crushed soul that refuses to believe in love since — I feel you.

We managed to wear singleness like a crown. We walk on red carpets with an air of condescension, not clinging onto anybody’s arm. We defy laws of gravity by refusing to acknowledge anyone who’s been trying their best to knock our walls down.

We love the convenience of not having to consult anybody over our decisions, of maximizing time and not letting anyone else’s schedule mess with ours, of having the sky as the limit of our dreams and all the other god damn things we can ever think of doing.

We firmly believe people only long to be in a relationship because they do not know how to be on their own — they feel trapped in a stranger’s body, they’re in need of someone who’ll change the way they see themselves and help them tame their demons.

And here we are, acing tests, earning dozens of blue ribbons on being strong, independent, and I don’t give a shit.

Bitterness is, now more than ever, a grudge we’ve been praising. We proudly chant it like an anthem. We think love is the least appetizing dish we want on our silver plates. And we’ve been so keen on patching big holes on our sweaters with 2.5-inch colorful band aids.

My band-aid is a 9ft elongated platform that has fins and leash; and floats on water. These last few months, surfing has been a white noise that offsets all the deafening murmurs I’ve been covering my ears from.

The ocean overwhelms me. It makes me see how little space I occupy in this world. It licks my wounds clean, washes worries off my head, and loops strings of hope around my waist.

My eyes have wandered far off the horizon way too many times, trying to get the hang of reading waves. Once I almost drowned and that’s when it hit me.

Isn’t love supposed to be like an ocean, wild and free?

I know I can never fully explore its expanse and I would most certainly experience mini-deaths getting lost and sinking deep beneath its waves. Yet each time, with a board and a made-up heart, I paddle out anyhow.

To the ones who solemnly swear love sucks, I’m sorry. I’m bailing out on you.

I don’t think love sucks. I think love is a beautiful thing that has its own share of bad days. Just like many of us.

Maybe we’ve played our cards wrong. Or maybe we shouldn’t have played with them at all. Maybe we’ve picked the wrong person, or wrong place, or wrong time.

Maybe it was all meant to happen exactly the way it did because otherwise we wouldn’t have learned a thing.

If big waves toughen a surfer, then so should heartbreaks, unmet expectations, unkept promises, and invaluable lessons on trust, forgiveness, and hope. It should toughen your heart so you can paddle back to the line-up braver, stronger, and wiser.

Why do we doubt true love’s existence only because we haven’t seen it for ourselves just yet?

Why do we look down on it only because it’s not at par with our expectations?

Why do we lock it up inside a bottle and let it float far away from where it can actually hurt us all because it has done so a lot of times before?