SOTD: Die with a smile by Lady Gaga
Have you ever been loved the way you read it in books? Me neither. Pass the bottle.
I remember sitting next to my mum and older sister on the couch in the living room. We'd always gather in the parlour every weekday to watch our favorite telenovela, Cuidado con el ángel Don't Mess with an Angel. even though I was far too young to be watching any telenovelas.
The living room descended into silence as we waited for the break to end. Then my sister asked: "Mummy, does true love really exist?" My tweenage ears perked up at the question. I wanted to hear her answer.
My mum replied: "Yes, you just have to find your person. Everyone has their own person."
I sat up eagerly. "So out of billions of people on this planet, you mean everyone is destined to meet their own person—their true love?", I asked.
"Yes." My mum answered with such conviction, like she was a thousand percent sure of it.
"What are the odds? What if your person lives in a different country, or a different continent? What are the chances of finding them?" I had too many questions and they were all met with a shrug and those three words—just pray enough.
If you've been reading my articles or you've seen some of my notes, you'd know that I am the hopeless-romantic-final-boss. Literally.
Most of us spent a great part of our childhood imagining the perfect future—the house, the cars, a stable job and income, travelling... and the most important final stop on the train to adulthood: finding love.
But what if some of us aren't destined to find love? What if we never get to experience the mind-boggling, soul-consuming love we see in movies—the kind of love that makes you pepper their face with kisses every morning, regardless of a morning breath; the kind of love that makes you FaceTime them for hours, not because you actually have anything to say, but because you just want to exist with them, carry them around with you as you go about the mundane, even if a screen acts as your only barrier?
Oftentimes, there's this subtle, crumpling grief of mourning something you never really had—yearning. A yearning to be someone's number one, someone's anchor. A yearning to experience those small, intimate moments.
The mistake a lot of people make when faced with the fear of never finding "the one" is trying to force other things into that exact void of longing. Everything else becomes superficial, and you start to resent the good things in your life because they remind you of everything they are not. While your friends' group chat goes off with messages, making plans for a get-together, you're sitting on your bed at five on a Sunday evening thinking of the easiest, most believable excuse as to why you can't make it. I don't think it's because you don't love your friends enough. I think it's because you're tired of trying to use one relationship as consolation for a missing one.
Then there are people who move through life like it's a dress rehearsal—neither here nor there, just drifting through relationships. They don't get too close, too attached. They simply exist in their own orbit. Their motto: Self-love is all you need. Self-love is essential—I think everyone needs to love themselves enough to extend that love to someone else—but it doesn't completely negate the natural human desire for external warmth and companionship. Self-love might keep you grounded, but it doesn't satisfy your hunger for a particular kind of human connection.
Love shows up knocking on your door in different attires. And it is not fair to think of deep friendships as lacking, or as a replacement for your non-existent romantic life—they co-exist. One offers its own unique flavor of intimacy, and the other offers you another. They are not substitutes—they are parallels.
Love ever rarely shows up complete, pre-installed and ready to be received. So don't move through life like every relationship is meant to serve as an all-in-one experience. Some people come into your life to teach you a lesson. Some people leave before they could even get started. Some will teach you to vehemently hate yORubA mEn. And some will be indifferent.
I cannot promise that the longing will go away forever. It may always be there, a looming, quiet presence. Love is a journey. Some people start and never finish. Some never start at all. And some people get to their final destination.
You might never find the love you fantasized about. But that doesn't mean every other kind out there is frivolous. It just shows up in different ways.
And that's completely okay.
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