Looking for Love

"Looking for Love" - an observation of life around me..

I am looking for Love. I will do anything for it.

I will ignore.
I will be callous.
I will be loud.
I will throw a tantrum.
I will be silent.
I will bear a grudge.
I will withhold.
I will push my way through.
I will cry.
I will scream.
I will fight for it.
I will break down.
I will run away.
I will lose.
I will win.
I will confess.
I will lie.
I will give in.
I will give up.
I will adjust.
I will bully.
I will not budge.

Because…
I was not taught to listen with my heart.
Only with my ears.

I was not taught to look with my understanding.
Only with my eyes.

I was not taught to speak what I feel.
Only what I fear.

And so I learnt survival
and not living.

And I don’t know real love.

I am looking for love and when I find it…
I will continue to do all I have ever done.
Because I know no other way to be anymore.
And I will be sorry I hurt you.
And I will lose your love.
Or live in fear of losing it.
And be back where I started…
..Looking for Love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I now know that love has many faces.

The hand that hit me as a child had love for me despite the blows. It once broke hard earth as a labourer’s hands so I could have pretty dresses and premium baby food. It also after the blows worked relentlessly to get me a scholarship so I could end up better than those hands.

The hands that never hugged me loved me despite that coldness. It made my meals, did my laundry and started a garden for me because those were the only acts of affection those hands knew how to afford.

The hands that threw away my life savings loved me despite the irresponsibility. It once wiped away my tears as a lover who gave me wings to fly free. It also after the regret of selfish gain worked tirelessly to feed, clothe and pamper our babies so they would never know lack. It also continues to wipe away my tears and holds me close on cold, dark nights.

The hands that did not pick up the phone to accompany me in my darkest hour loved me despite the lack of time and ability to find the right words. It sent money for my daughter to continue dancing and painting. It also folded in constant prayer asking for all the comfort it could not give to arrive to me through someone else.

And to those who genuinely did not love me.. they did too. In their own fashion, however they could afford to. It could have been an hour of shared laughter over pretentious coffee or in one moment of hello in a courtesy call.

Because I now know that love is like money to many. They can’t give more than what's in their personal account. And unlike bank accounts where figures show clear deficits, hearts that lack are not as apparent to the observer, and far less so to the account holder.

And so, far too many people keep it all in... whatever love they have, unsure how much they actually have and how to gain more. And if they must, they dole it out ever so carefully, weighing every heart dollar, afraid they will run out. Constantly looking for their perception of love they can afford or that is of ‘bankable’ value, they fail to see so much available love that is in plain view.

It could be a street vendor giving me a 10 cent discount on my breakfast.

It could be my child openly stomping off and slamming the door to cool off instead of agreeing in silent resentment just to appease me.

It could be an ‘outer circle’ friend who regularly remembers to send me an uplifting message.

It does not need to be a lover devoted to me all the time, a friend who is available 24-7, a parent who understands my view constantly, a spouse who adjusts to my flaws effortlessly, or a child who is obedient and grateful everyday.

Because I see now that love wears too many disguises and I often miss them because I am looking at love conditionally in my quest for unconditional love. In my longing to be loved without expectations pinned on me, I love conditionally by only accepting love that I can recognize beyond the disguise it wears, according to my interpretation and perception of what it should look like… according to my own expectations of what love is.

Instead, I will do well from this point onwards to love unconditionally by accepting that love could look like anything.

I have a feeling that as I open my mind and heart to this possibility, it may just be that I will find the unconditional love I seek everywhere in and around me. And looking for Love this way.. I will at last find the amazing reciprocity of life. I will find at long last.. Love looking for ME.

LOVE IS...The Power to Change Our Endings

There are many photographs in my home. All of them are sweet memories. All of them of people and moments I hold close to my heart. But photographs of my wedding are not among them. I have a few framed but they are hidden away in a corner, as if I am ashamed to display them. I am. They give me no comfort and remind me of a day I would rather forget.

For the longest time, memories of my wedding day have been hazy. Somehow, I feel we started our life together all wrong.. despite our love surviving against all odds.

He had waited for me since he was 10. I finally fell in love with him at 15. Our ethnic backgrounds clashed for in other parts of the world, our cultures never meet. I fought my parents, lied, sneaked out back doors, was threatened, beaten and was even locked up to keep me away from him. I broke up with him just once wondering at the last minute if the first guy I had ever loved was enough of a sample to commit my entire life. I lasted a mere month without him, a month ending with me running back knowing for sure that I was going to hell if I followed my logical, complicated head rather than my loving, simple heart. That was the only time we were ever willingly apart, on my part anyway. He flew 8000 miles to make me change my mind and finally left because he loved me enough to let me go if that was what would make me happy. Happiness, I soon discovered while on my own, was a place forever in his heart.

We were sure we wanted a life together more than anything this world had to offer us, so we said our vows quietly soon after he proposed before a witness of two. But that was far away from my home and when I returned to my parent’s house, we had one last hurdle – to make our secret marriage a public one so that we could finally wake up next to each other every morning for the rest of our lives. My father finally agreed to our wedding, gaining respect for my love with every week he played another game of chess with him instead of taking me out, and we were ecstatic. After 8 years of clandestine meetings, measured conversations through paper and phone lines, of hearing my heart crack every time we had to go our own separate ways, we were a wedding day away. Enough waiting for someone else’s permission just to see his smile, so I could have one of my own. We had finally purchased our ticket to Happy Ever After.

But I never walked down the aisle to him like I had hoped I would. We exchanged our lifelong vows in a borrowed room with a borrowed minister with no evidence a wedding was taking place. I held no bouquet. I didn’t even have a special dress for the occasion. I had just pulled on whatever best I could find.

The only beautiful things I remember from that night were our love for each other, our handwritten vows and our wedding rings. Those and my lover’s tears as he spoke his promises to me should have been more than enough, but deep down there were unspoken hopes and hurts surrounding our wedding day that cast a shadow over us. Our love should have been strong enough to dispel that shadow, but instead, it was that we loved each other too much that we gave it a space in our lives. We tacitly denied the glitch in our love story, comforting each other with silver linings instead. And so that shadow became a thin barrier over time..so thin it wasn’t a tangible presence… yet a barrier nonetheless that filtered out the full spectrum of our happiness. Every wedding anniversary became a bittersweet day we both gingerly celebrated, a concerted effort to avoid that shadow.

But one fine day a decade later, I find myself finally at a place where I have enough strength to face that shadow and revisit our painful wedding memories. It is at my best friend’s wedding where my love and I spend a beautiful Saturday evening side-by-side with close friends, having the loveliest conversations. I wear a beautiful new dress I like and my lover, his favourite new clothes. We carry in our arms not a bouquet, but our sweet youngest daughter. And the world stands still when as the couple finish their vows, my lover gives me his own and we exchange our own kiss. We enjoy the beauty of everything around us celebrating true love – the moonlight, the flowers, the friendships, the photographs, the music, the food and the delightfully dressed guests. Gazing up at the full moon that night, I become aware that we have just enjoyed the garden wedding I had wished to have for our 10th wedding anniversary.

There I finally see the shadow for what it is - the regret that we did not make a better effort to have a special wedding worthy of our great romance. Yet hidden among my memories that have collected dust in the shadows lies a truth I have ignored along with my wedding photographs. We did in fact make a great effort for our wedding, but it was all directed at keeping the peace between our families long enough so that we could finally have what we truly wanted – not a mere wedding, but for the both of us to be together at last.. daily and freely. We desperately wanted to walk out in the open holding each other’s hand and be free to decide where to go and what time to call it a day. To have the simple freedom of unabashedly expressing our love for each other anytime, anywhere. All these years I have failed to see that unlike other couples, our marriage was not a uniting of two families but a barter to gain the basic freedom so many other couples take for granted.. the luxury of a shared meal, the joys of a simple heartfelt conversation.

Our wedding day was indeed a great moment in our love story, although it was not a reflection of our great romance. Instead, our wedding was a complicated and painful experience we avoid remembering because it was a reflection of the many barriers we faced as lovers. It is a day that is a stark reminder of the unsupportive relationships in our lives and the discomfort of two clashing cultures barely accommodating each other, begrudgingly admitting that love had conquered their differences. Our wedding was purely a social contract between two families, not a celebration of our love. Neither family really had any interest in a union they tried so hard to deny, and it follows that it could never have turned out a fitting day to celebrate it.

So I no longer feel regret attached to that day because as it turns out, there was no glitch in our love story after all. Far from caving in to the great pressure from our families to give up our own wedding day dreams, we gave in to their needs and demands because we had a far greater dream of life beyond our wedding. Our wedding day was not the weak link in our romance, it was a testimony of its strength.. as it was our final battleground. We may have come away with some casualties, but it is the day we won the war. We can look back now with pride over a battle well fought instead of with regret over the injuries we gained because after 10 years of marriage, we stand on soil that was well worth fighting for.

A decade of love that has grown stronger with time has given me the power to rewrite our history, and I am finally free of my runaway wedding and all its hovering shadows. After all these years, our wedding anniversary will finally be a day of great meaning, but one equal to many Independence Day celebrations all over the world as opposed to the romantic Valentine Day memories so many wedding anniversaries evoke. That’s okay though.. because it’s our hard won independence that keeps us cherishing the love we fought so hard to set free.

Still, our love story is missing a day to celebrate the great romance of our life. A day just for us.. to celebrate the very special love we share with each other that has seen the test of time and great trials. Perhaps a garden picnic or a cocktail party by a pool.. with flowers and pretty mementos. Definitely plenty of photographs taken of us both laughing into each other’s eyes and holding each other close. Captured moments in time of a very special day celebrating our life together.. tangible reflections of our great love story we will always be happy to remember and display along with our other cherished memories. But for now, I’ve added another photograph to our collection of favourites.

There are many photographs in my home. All of them are sweet memories. All of them of people and moments I hold close to my heart. Photographs of my wedding are now among them. I have taken them out of the dusty corner they were hidden in, because my love and I are proud to display them. They remind us now of a day we can never forget.. the day our love flew free.