FIGHTING NOT

Once, I fell in-love with a man. He certainly wasn’t the first man I treated as specially but he is the first one who made me realize I am not supposed to treat love like a battle.

It’s not news that I’ve fallen for a guy who’s there but actually isn’t. My heart had given in to guys I am only capable of watching from a distance before. Guys I will never have the courage to befriend. Now, came he. A guy I only see in pictures. A guy I do not actually speak to in person. A guy I have no way of holding in the flesh. But a guy my heart considers home. A home I always wanna run back to but won’t be able to because I have never actually lived there.

He’s the first guy that had me throwing my hands up not because I’m tired. Neither because I’m giving up. Not even because I have no love left to give. But because along this course, along this journey on a one-way street, I realized I have been missing the point. Love is not war. So, we are not supposed to equate loving with fighting.

That’s what we all like to think when we’re in-love. We’re drunk on the idea that because what we have inside us feels so real, we have to fight for it. And that we have to find a way to win.

No one ever told us that un-reciprocated love is still love. Unrequited love is as real as a two-way love. Or perhaps, somebody did. But we’ve heard more people saying these kinds of love are not valid because you’re the only one doing it and the favor is not being returned. Until we’re filled with fear and cynicism, with hatred and bitterness. Until this became the very thing we believed in.

They’re not entirely true, though. When we love, we don’t always have to fight. We can sit in a coffee shop alone and love. We can stare blankly at a wall or a ceiling and still love. We can watch the person we love go gaga over someone else and that is still love. We don’t always have to have a hand to hold .We don’t always have to have a shoulder to lean on. We are not required to have the person we love right next to us to make our love count. Reciprocated or not, love always counts.

Loving is loving. Loving is making a person happy, even it means we have to set them free, even if it takes letting them go.

Loving is loving. It is not an action that needs an approval.

Loving is loving. It is not a concept that needs to be accepted.

Loving is loving. You can get hurt but it doesn’t make you blame the other person for whatever pain.

Loving is loving. It doesn’t make you end up feeling vengeful in the end if things don’t go the way you have fantasized them.

Loving is loving. It’s not something that makes you think and think too much. It’s something that makes you feel and feel so much.

As of this writing, I am still in-love with that same man. I still get lost in his arms with the thousand hugs he gives me. I still go crazy about all his attempts to be cute and funny. I still appreciate him for being himself after all my expectations that he hasn’t met. This and all while we’re oceans apart.

I am not fighting because I already won. I already won by just loving. All the sweet-nothings are just bonuses. They may not mean anything to him or to other people. They mean a lot to me, however. All the happiness I get to feel because of him is enough for me say that he’s definitely a battle worth fighting. I’m content with the space he allots for me and the time I am spared.

I am not fighting. Loving, yes. But not fighting.

I am not fighting.