Confession

Dear love What are you? The more I think I understand you, the more you surprise me with a face I have never seen before. Are you the wave of sadness that takes over a child when he loses his favorite toy, or are you the tears of the mother who aches for the sight of her dead son? Are you the silence of the father who hugs his son to war or the cries of the 30-year-old woman who just lost her husband to cancer? Perhaps you are the late-night thoughts of a teenage boy who dreams of being noticed by this one fellow human or the diffidence of a girl to face this one boy at school who she thinks is the smartest guy in the universe. You might even be the desire of the young student who bunks his school to play cricket or the torment of his teacher who tells him not to. Sometimes, it all feels like an illusion, something that we hold on to just because of our instinctive need to be with someone, but then my heart pounds against my chest, almost breaking my ribs, reminding me of a peace it has left somewhere in the past. A piece that contained the meaning of my existence and the answer to my long and empty looks into nothingness. Love may not be so abstract after all. It might be the result of an instinctive behaviour or a byproduct of our social nature. But what is the shame in that? Even if we reduce it to the lowest lows, love always wins. Someone told me on a random night at 3 that love is very dark, and we don’t talk about it enough, and now I understand what she meant. The darkness that love brings is what shapes the thoughts and beliefs of a lover. The constant need for attention or at least a look of the beloved, the urge to confront them with your love yet the fear of being sidelined. Love destroys lives, but we can’t stop feeling it anyway. Love takes over the heart like a parasite feeding on every other emotion until all the heart can feel is love.