Unraveling (I)
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| source: http://curiano.com |
Love means how far you would bend for your significant one. If he or she is really significant to you, then no matter how hard it is, you are willing to bend for him or her, unconditionally. And that’s what you called love. Well, at least that’s what I believe, no, I have learnt. Happiness happens when love is reciprocal; not only in terms of feeling, but also in terms of efforts, and struggles. So, in another words, sadness happens when it’s not reciprocal. Reciprocity itself can only become true when both parties have similarities regarding to how they show their feelings through efforts and struggles. In order to get there, one must sacrifice his or her ego to another, because every man and woman has their own way to love someone. So, love means how much you would sacrifice for your significant one, and how much you would understand him or her.
Here I have a story to tell; a
story I can speak to no one, therefore I write it for anyone. It’s a story
about a woman who loves a man. A woman, because I think she’s old enough
now to understand love; what it’s capable of and the pain it can cause. And a
man, because I also think that he’s a grown-up, well, not to mention that he’s
actually younger than the woman, but, yeah, age is just number anyway, the
important thing is that he’s so tall and handsome as hell. The story I’m
going to tell will be too biased toward the woman’s point of view, though,
since this is a story of a woman who loves a man.
The woman and the man have an
agreement. You may say it’s just a post-modern way to call a ‘commitment’, but,
yeah, they called it an agreement. They made the agreement and sealed the deal
to stick with it. The purpose is to be together. Why? Because they love each
other, they want to be with one another, and they need to be together. Okay,
right until this point, it seems so simple, right? Well, here comes the little
bit more complicated part.
They love each other, no question
about that, in terms of feeling. However, apparently they both have different
ways to love one another. The woman fell for the man, once and for all. And
ever since, her life is never the same again as before. She loves him with his
whole package. And by the whole package, it means that she loves even his
darkest past, ugliest flaws, worst behaviors, strangest attitudes, weirdest
personalities, and craziest part of him. She loves everything about him and she
embraces anything of him.
How does she love him? She cares
for him, so much. How does she care? She gives questions, asking how he’s doing
when they don’t meet in a day, asking what he’s up to, asking anything she can
ask to him. And she gives him some space, since she understands it too well how
a human-being has the needs to be alone sometimes, and that kind of ‘I don’t
feel like talking’ feeling. Those are the ways she cares for him for his whole
package. And by the whole package, it means that she cares about what’s going
on in his life, every single bit of it.
Whether the man realizes it or
not, the woman has bent for him, so many times. She may be crying every night
when she’s all alone in her room, but she never shed a tear in front of him (as
long as she’s sober), a promise she has made for herself since four years ago,
the first time she cried in front of him. She may be breaking down and tearing
apart in front of her bestfriend, but she never shows it in front of him. Not
because she isn’t vulnerable, also not because she’s being fake. She does it
out of consideration. She doesn’t want him to feel bad or guilty or angry or
everything that could destroy him. She’s fragile. She knows he’s fragile too.
Since she understands it too well how it feels to be a fragile, she treats him
carefully, as careful as she can. Too busy looking after him; meanwhile, she
forgets to mend herself. That’s how she bends. She puts him beyond everything.
There are so many times the woman
breaks her own habit, violates her own rules, rewrites her own principles,
deconstructs and reconstructs all over again; she does them all in order to
bend, for the sake to be together with the man. Most of all, she doesn’t want
to force him into something that shackles him. She loves him for free. And
that’s the way she loves him; a way that she had found by conforming, by
bending. She’s just a human, after all. She’s wearing out by the process, and
sometimes, it cracks her. When it cracks, she lets go of herself to tell him
what she really, truly feels; her sadness, disappointments, resentments. Sadly,
most of the times, he takes it as the way she’s putting fight with him; a total
misunderstanding. She’s speaking up her feelings, which is a very big deal for
her, but it ends up with him being mad at her, and even shut her off. While
actually, she’s open for negotiation and all she really wants is his
consideration, his consolation, his caring, and his concern. She’s wrecked,
thinking that perhaps it’s in the way she tells him, perhaps a wrong way, a
wrong time, a wrong choice of words, a wrong approach. She’s crumbled, thinking
that it’s her fault, after all. She might be smiling and laughing on the
outside, but she’s numb inside. She can’t do anything right whenever he ignores
her; she can’t concentrate, she can’t eat well, she’s losing focus. Eventually,
that makes her trying to bend all over again. She’s willing to do everything to
make things right again, even if it costs her so much pain.
One night, the man asked the
woman, “Am I a bad person?” “No,” she answered. “Am I a good person?” he asked.
“Not really,” she answered. “What kind of person am I?” he asked. She answered,
“Definitely not a bad person, not entirely a good person either, but you are
enough for me.” And she meant it, with all her heart. However, she’s the one who
feels that she will never be enough for him. It happens so many times, twirling
like a storm inside her mind, a fear and anxiety that she’s not good enough for
him. But that’s when she realizes that even though she’s a woman, there’s still
a little girl inside of her. And this little girl needs to be cared; she needs
to feel loved. The woman loves to give, and the girl needs to receive.
That’s the story I can tell so
far. In the end, what is love? I’m not going to define what love is, because
there is no absolute definition about it. All there is just a circle of
interpretations about love. So I guess instead of questioning the meaning of
love, we should ask to ourselves instead: how do we love? Simply because for
me, the word ‘love’ itself suits better as a verb than a noun. So, how do we
love? Has the way we love made our significant one feels loved yet?
“Time won’t fly, it’s like I’m
paralyzed by it. I’d like to be my old-self again, but I’m still
trying to find it. After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your
own, now you mail back my things and I walk home alone.”
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