When I was 14, I found a boy extremely charismatic in my computer classes. He had the duende of a young, ambitious city boy, so of course, my young heart wanted to be around him. I scored a 99% in computer applications that year.
I have seen people leave cities simply because it became unbearable for them to traverse the same paths that were once walked on, by the person they loved. Leave companies because they couldn’t find it in themselves to see the same face everyday. Top exams because they studied with the intention of cracking the examination with the love of their lives. Lose all meaning in life because nothing exists if the person they fell for, doesn’t.
I have seen love do its thing.
To others, and to me.
~ I know love is not intentional. ~
We do not fall in love because we want to.
We just do - like the antibiotic we take for a sore throat, but that eventually puts us to sleep.
Unexpectedly,
precipitously.
But love has a tendency to afflict.
Sometimes, it resides in your mind like a hamster running continually on its wheel. Soon, it becomes a habit and you’re obsessing over a person who does not feel the same way about you.
If you’re lucky, both of you fall in love. The symbiotic relationship that once began as a collision of two unique, beautiful personalities, merges into one single world that revolves around each other. If you’re mature enough, you learn to exist together, and as individuals.
If you aren’t, you become emotionally dependent, and lose sight of who you were as a person, or what life looked like, before you met them.
Many people believe it’s worth it. That they’d do it all over again, in a heartbeat.
Of course, whether that’s a wise decision or just an emotional one, is a call millions take everyday. As of now, I cannot decide.
All I know is, love comes with a price that is marked up so high that you lose sight of what you bought it for. And we must be careful with it.
When we love someone who grows, we grow.
When we love someone who stunts, we shrink.
One person has changed the course of countries - any one, therefore, is sure as hell capable of changing you.
~Loving carefully (?) ~
Perhaps as individuals who fear only loneliness next to death, love seems worth the risk.
Over time though, what I’ve concluded is that we can love slowly - less passionately - at least in the beginning.
Stroll in its garden, instead of falling into its holes. Give it the time to breathe, and nurture, and grow. To smile, and weep, and rage. Label its package as fragile, and always, handle it with care. Observe it at a distance. Remember how it started, because nothing is as humbling as the reminder of beginnings.
~ My word of understanding ~
When we can’t change the course of things, we must learn to respond to it slowly. When we are too full, we must learn to leak gradually. Suddenness almost always spills our contents. Not all of us are equipped to deal with it.
In gradualness, we find courage - I find that to be the panacea to most problems.
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