Despite Every Doubt, I Still Believe In Love
For as long as I can recall, whenever it came to matters of Love, seldom would I hear favorable words being spoken. It was either elders scoffing at the idea of young love, almost as if their age-old wisdom assured them that true love was unattainable. Or it was the bitterness of heartbroken souls swearing off relationships and ridiculing the thought of ‘forever’ that always seemed to haunt the idea of love.
The very idea of marriage itself is made to look like a life-long prison sentence. “Once you get into it, there’s no way out” or “Why would you want to give up your freedom?” or the best one yet, one partner for the rest of your life.
So we go all out and celebrate ‘one last time’ by throwing a lavish party to reminisce our last day of “freedom.”
Doesn’t this seem ironic? By glorifying these acts do we not ultimately achieve the paradoxical effect of making monogamous relationships seem drab?
The stresses of experiencing heartbreak after heartbreak and witnessing marriages failing everyday certainly acts as the impetus to abandon faith and drown in the negativity. Why do happily-ever-afters seem so unattainable? Why does True love feel more and more like a myth everyday? These are the thoughts reverberating in our heads constantly.
Somewhere amidst this confusion and turmoil however, lies a love that doesn’t ask for any attention. A love that is so consumed by itself, it only ever thinks about protecting and nurturing what is –everything else seems so trivial in the grand scheme of things.
When we live in a world where good things are taken away from us far too soon, this is the only way we can inoculate our relationship against such evils.
Because experiencing true love parallels absolute euphoria.
Your love becomes your safe place, the place you can retreat to when times get rough. It’s that urge to go back home the moment you leave it. It’s the selfishness to schedule anything on weekends because that’s all you’ll be looking forward to once every Monday rolls in. You constantly wonder if it’s even humanely possible for your heart to love so much, to give so much. True love makes you look forward to tomorrows, because each day serves as a fresh reel to capture new moments that are etched in your memory forever. Even mundane grocery trips or visits to the dentist seem that much more exciting.
True love never restricts. It’s the anchor to a ship, as much as it’s the wings to a bird. It’s the implicit trust that leaves no room for insecurities. It understands that sometimes separation is inevitable, and it patiently waits. It’s when the journey takes precedence over the destination.
True love means picking a team member to work on all of life’s projects together. Someone who knows exactly which moment calls for a certain comfort food. Someone who has a reserve for all imaginable contingencies. Someone whose embrace melts all your worries away. Even amidst disagreements it’s the glue that holds everything together. It’s loving someone even through the anger. Even during the toughest of times, it endures. There are no shortcuts, no loopholes; it’s the conscious effort of two people who chose each other every day. It always fixes, and never replaces.
Every event in your life is merely a breadcrumb in your trail towards your one true love. Someday, you will cross paths with someone that your soul recognizes. Someone who will feel so familiar, yet so new. Someone who will leave a footprint in your heart so deep that you will never be able to recall what life was like before them. Someone who you always knew, deep down, would walk into your life and renounce every doubt you had. Someone to show you, that love doesn’t need to be perfect, it needs to be true.