2. 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄.
I've read a myriad of works on first loves; poems, novels, short stories, hell - even magazine articles. First loves seem to become the center of a growing woman's life once, and then, it all fizzles out. The excitement, the adrenaline rush of finding someone so seemingly compatible coming to a sudden halt until all you're left with is the comfortable hum of a stable romance.
I was never one to settle. I did not grow up to learn the twists and turns of relationships. I was not made to compromise - I was a steady wall of stubbornness, an adamant woman who knew exactly what she wanted in life. And yet, whenever asked about love, I become blank.
And this is why I read about first loves. I never knew what to expect when it came to romance, because the stories I've heard about arguments leading to divorce, about obsession and apathy always tainted my view on a feeling that was supposed to be romantic. I learned about love the same way I learned about the cardiovascular system, through books and diagrams, mapping out the body's veins until they reach the ventricles. I traced my fingertips through the lines of capillaries underneath the skin, and in the same way, I had made a map of love with how it was supposed to be.
Robert Burns painted red when I asked him about love. He had brought me to a garden of roses and played me the tune of his romance, light and fleeting under the summer sun. His love was a promise, a promise to stay until the seas dry out, and even until then, he had promised his return.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning sat me down after she and I had made the world our playground. She held her fingers up, and amidst my heavy breathing, I counted with her. To her, love was a way of living, and she had listed how her heart used to beat in staccatos for her lover. In the soft lilt of her voice, she continued to count the ways her love had transcended the barriers of simply being an emotion. Her love was being, being deep, being free, being pure. Her love was being consistent, even after death has done both part.
I spend my days in the company of writers and my nights under the grasp of science. It tells me that love is a chemical reaction of neurotransmitters, a physiological reaction resulting from external interactions, and for the longest time, I became a slave to facts, ignoring the ignorant bliss in fiction. No love has ever lasted because science made me a cynic.
And yet, underneath that cynical woman was the dying poet who believed in Pablo Neruda. You see, Neruda had watched silently as I flitted from one author to another, patiently awaiting his turn to convince this wanna-be writer that love was not a mere sequence of words on paper. Neruda had shown me love, not as what it should be, but what it should not be. "I do not love you," he had repeated until the words became a mantra that haunted my dreams. To him, love was not extravagant. Love was not loud, and it was not a roaring wave from the sea of emotions the heart undergoes.
Love is this: comfort under warm blankets, thick duvets and wandering hands as lips rush to claim. Love is silence in the dark nights, yet a plethora of words louder than blaring car horns behind every longing gaze. Love knows no required word count, it knows no standard, needs no bejeweled presents, recognizes no standard nor pace of growth. Love is a bible verse awaiting to be read by the faithful, and a poetic line in a book in the hands of an atheist awaiting inspiration.
And words come alive when we put them into practice.
Love is this: the first meeting, when my eyes met yours from the other end of the room, and that single gaze has proven to be a denouement to all my problems. Love is the way you had laughed, and the world seemed to rock on its axis, the sound reverberating from your chest and right into my hypothalamus. It is the way your mere existence caused an over-production of oxytocin, and I am left confused, because they say too much is bad, but how could this much love be bad, when just a single smile from you brightens up my day? They say too much is bad, and yet, I cannot find it in me to see evil behind hazel irises. If God had taken mercy on me as I cried my eyes out last night, I would gladly recognize you as my guardian angel. Love is this, the way my heart pours in buckets of belief and blind faith, and usually my emotions do not cloud my rational thought, but when I think of you, I think of how every lobe in my brain is occupied by the simple "hello"s you say during our evening calls. I think about how you seem to pull your laughter from the bottom of your body for it to come out so loud (and I know how deep it must be, with six feet and three inches worth of laughter and poorly executed jokes). I think about how your name sounds more like a prayer when I say it, how every syllable seems to fit, and how you make my name sound like a worship song.
I think about how you had brought back every semblance of romance in my being, when my cynicism became a nagging voice in the back of my mind instead of a general commanding an army. I think about how loving you had made me love the things that set fire to my soul again; music, writing, playing -- living.
And when I think of you, I think of how Shakespeare had compared his love to a fever, and how Wilcox had compared lips to wine, how Chaucer had promised through life and death and everything in between, and how Whitman stayed contented with mere glimpses.
I think of the love they wrote of, how everything varied, and yet, the love -- this love remained. Because when I think of you, I feel the love they talk of, the kind of love that sits deep in your bones, that holds you in the coldest nights. I feel the kind of love that seems to set my heart alight with happiness, and if this is what it feels like to be in heaven, I promise never to sin again.
I think of the love they wrote of, and then...
And then, I think of you.