Love Beyond February 14th

Love has always appeared like an act to be performed in places where I was permitted to view and never invited to participate. It circles me in silent actions and vocal assertions in laughter on-the-phone and in easy formless moments between two individuals who know the rhythm of each other so well. 

It seems that, observing love take place around me is like sitting by a window in the rain and seeing how beautiful it is when it is touching the roofs and flowers. The glass is a reminder to me that I am dry, untouched and I am watching and not feeling and wondering why love comes to some houses and circles round and round outside my house each lonely night.

I have wondered, in the past whether I was too unseen to come under the love process of choice. I wondered, that when no one else appeared to be picked, maybe there was something I lacked. Like having a password that was never provided, or a language I never got to master speaking properly. It is the weird loneliness to sit among couples who share stories of how they met, how they text each other good morning and good night, how their hands naturally fall in the space of the other's hand like the pieces of a puzzle made to fit. 

I am laughing and nodding, though some part of my mind wonders whether love had a pass over me, since I was too cautious or alert at one time or another.

Love is screaming in upper case and doctored photographs punctuated with red hearts and anniversary essays as long as chapters in books. Co-ordinated uniforms imply solidarity by the colour and mutual smiles. On the internet, love appears to be perfect and stage-rehearsed, ready before actually going into the street. In actual life, love speaks silent more than it speaks. It lurks in the manner one keeps the remaining bit of food or reminds another human being to text him or her when they get home safe. Those two versions coexisting together make me question what one is more accurate, or whether they are two languages narrating the same storey in a different way to us.

I have experienced times when I was in the insecure state of being the almost. The nearly called, the nearly affair, the nearly confession that was just about to slip out of the lips of a person. 

That almost is like being at the door that offers an opening that is just wide enough to allow light to pass through but never wide enough to enter. You are taught to value half promises and experiences that are real but untitled. 

The nearly, also a lesson in patience and self doubt. It reveals how uncertainty is keeping hope alive and at the same time breaking it down silently. Leaving pencil marks of memories which cannot be fully erased even by the weak hearts.

Being in a continuous exposure to romance is like being along a bottomless ocean. A few days, the waves make me hopeful as it reminds me that love is real and one day it may come to me in earnestness to my shore. On other days, the same waves tire me, and I am reminded of the lengthy wait time and the tiring aspect of celebrating others as I question when I will get my chance. 

Romance dreams, but may make a silent pressure, as a timepiece masked as rose-petals. It involves learning how to smile in a wedding, and secretly practise questions of timing, deservingness, and how one is emotionally mature enough to love and be loved that is always agonisingly indecisive within.

Social pressure also exists that demands that love be seen as being legit. Society dresses the love with the public displays with couples motivated to demonstrate expressions with pictures, captions, and celebrations together. Singlehood may make one feel as though it has the fluorescent lights with no script and is expected to show happiness without the validation of a partner. Sometimes the pressure of appearing to be loved is so great that it is more vital than the process of really being loved. It generates illusion such that appearances remain facts and lack becomes a suspicion. However, I have learned that love is not a costume that one wears in order to be liked but something deeper and more subtle, found in friendship, family ties, trifles remembered by lonely hearts.

Love appears like synchronisation on the outside. It is like two individuals walking side by side without talking of direction. It is manifested in common laughter which is intimate even in large rooms. At a distance, love seems to be as easy as a book that is penned without errors or stammering. A close look at love will also show it is compromising, forgiveness and learning to be there when one may find it easier to leave. It is not as ideal as it seems. It is dishevelled, unpredictable, even painful, but, people come back to it over and over once again, and this may be the most beautiful mystery of love and its most puzzling one to the hearts of many who are still today wandering in shaky hopesful souls.

It has been great to observe love as an outsider. It has also helped me appreciate the manner in which I love other people. Although such love is never turned into romance. It has demonstrated that longing is not frailty, but a sign that one has a heart which can feel intensely. It has made me remember that love is not a race where there are time limits and endings. Love comes to people in all sorts of ways, sometimes in a loud manner, sometimes in a silent manner, sometimes in a self discovery way hence bringing another person into the picture. Waiting is a teacher that allows growing and at the same time, he teaches patience and emotion awareness by having silent reflective evenings on her own sometimes during uncertain seasons.

It is possible that I am an observer that has been exposed to the details of love. I hear the slight variations in tones when a person talks about another human being that he/she loves and the unseen strands between two lives. Perhaps I have not been chasing love blindly but knowing it well and getting emotionally ready. I could come out of the window one day and experience the rain rather than see it. I may learn that love had never shunned me but just waiting to come at the right time. I am still holding on even now that the love is building up silently in patient hearts, anticipating a gorgeous blossom when the time will be good.