It Must’ve Been Love

Or not.

Something giggles me. That happens every time I look back on all the places where I met these people in my love life. It could be at a shitty bar in KL. By the food stall at a boring conference in Surabaya. While folding the country’s flag together as 10th graders. In so-called green activities on Sundays in Jakarta. At work meeting at a hipster coffeeshop that I hate. Someone I’ve met on the train. On the plane. Or in a really, unpredictably weird place in a red light district.

During one of those unexpected encounters, as you recall it, you just clicked.  

And then boom! Let’s meet again and talk about how the Universe works over coffee, beers, tea, Sushi, the best street food in town. Part of us allows this other person to put a spell on us, to complete that missing puzzle within only to let them see the most naked version of us. This content feeling has brought us to a state we can’t seem to explain, yet, but it feels so damn good. It fucks you well. You forget who you were before you met this person – just two people who feel like they live in heaven. As a result, we’ve agreed to call it love. Ah, madly in love. A day without this person could feel like a thousand years (this is when you begin to understand love songs are meant to be crazy because you alone can’t explain what you feel either, like the rest of those love worshippers). You’d make all the sacrifices needed to make it to this person, from financial to time. This person could cost you the greatest dream you’ve had. Weirdly, you feel okay with it. You’d trade everything in the world for this person. In love, you’re supposed to lose sometimes. The older people are true: ‘it’s easier to succeed in your career than in love because in career all you know is how to win’. You’re supposed to play with your ego, to feel torn apart, too.

And then you learn how to trust another soul other than yourself. Showing them what you’ve been hiding in the closet and laugh together as the sun sets in the west (this is too ideal btw). Sometimes, you care less about the world getting doomed as long as you have someone to hold onto, that love.

Even in 2016, nothing like all these crazy love stories I’ve heard. I admire them just as much as I love food (if you know me) simply because they’re unique, weird and hell, adjectives can’t describe. From where I stand, someone could never be too young to speak about love. We don’t have teachers for this. Seeking for an advice from someone older who is just as confused may not be the most ideal answer either. And yet we’ve blamed everything that goes wrong on love, like that guy who jumped off the train for his ex-girlfriend? There you go. Ah, love. You win. Always.

Me being 22, that’s the love I know. Maybe I’ll know better, later in life.

I’ve been in love. Several times in life. I’ve learned to love that person every day. I’ve learned to put up with the shit love throws at me. We both have learned to communicate our fears and how to deal with our insecurities. So much to learn about each other until we get to the chapter we weren’t prepared to understand: when things don’t seem to work out anymore, one has to take the exit lane, which based on my journals, I’ve done quite a lot recently. I’ve been taking these exit lanes for a quite a while.

Too deep, man. 

I wish I’d told my younger-self this:

Love takes two, not one. If you see yourself fighting alone in that journey, learn how to kiss that love a terribly good goodbye. But if you choose the opposite and continue to grow mapple trees in Sahara dessert, that’s unhealthy. Leave. As far as your feet can go. Make peace with yourself for having met the wrong person. You’ve seen pain. Now carry all the lessons you’ve learned with you as you open your door again. 

Although our universes seem to run in parallel, perhaps life will allow us to meet again one day in the future when both of us are wiser. Wise enough to view love as a way to understand ourselves better.

It was indeed a good love, but I lost it somehow.