To love someone is pretty painful.

I never understood love until I saw my mother shed tears for my father. She was holding his hand in the hospital bed. It was when my father got brain stroke and was paralyzed. He was lying half dead in the ICU.

I used to wake up in the middle of the night just to hear the sound of her heavy breathing and sniff crying. That time, seeing my mother’s dejection at that heartbreaking period, I thought to myself, “To love someone is pretty painful.”

I have seen how my parents’ love chop down and embalmed for years. I have witnessed how my mother used to play saddest song and the words she would murmur before she would get into the sleep after an argument with my father. I could hear her sniff crying then.

I used to ask her, “How can someone bear all the tantrums of another for so long? How can you swallow all your anger and be normal with the same person you fought the previous day? How can you love someone for these long years?” But she used to remain silent.

Then I realized that love is certainly tied with pain. When you love someone, it is unavoidable to get hurt over and over again. One can’t be always happy. There would be ruthless times, there would be hurricanes that would surely come in between.

Today, watching my mother and father laughing at some talk. Watching my mother helping my half paralyzed father to clean his hands after the meal. Watching my mother helping him climb through the steps. Watching them going for walking holding one another’s hand. Watching them transform and seeing them grow old together, I feel so blessed. The sparks in their eyes is nothing but love. Now, I realize my mother’s silence when I asked her those stupid questions then.

It is amazing how love prevails everything. Isn’t it constantly love that controls above everything? Isn’t it the urge of keeping the person you love despite their flaws and the will to accept that person with all your heart? Love is everywhere. Love is in every little thing. Love that stays even after the hurricanes, is a rare thing. So, if you get lucky to find yours, keep it. Preserve it. Nurture it.  

And certainly, I am asking to myself, “What more can I ask to God, when the feeling of true love is already right before my eyes?”

Believe me, love looks incredible. And I am thinking to myself, “Will I ever be able to open up all the pieces of my heart and let someone fill the gap in it?”  What if one of us falls and the other doesn’t? What then? Then it is going to hurt. I am not capable of making someone else blend the colors of their life with colors of my life. I can’t break myself and search for someone to put the pieces into the place. I am scared that I will only be the one falling in and getting hurt. I can never be like my mother. My insecurities and my stubbornness would always swallow the love that I have. 

I am left swirling with the question in my brain. I am left questioning everything. And you know, I have difficult time with this world. Often I think I am not meant for it.