I’ve always felt too much and thought too little. For many years I believed I was a very complicated human being, certainly romanticising the idea that I’d found someone who would understand me fully, who would read through my reactions, comprehend every unsaid word I didn’t have the courage to let out and reach every dusty corner of my wrecked soul.
As a 90s kid I grew up between Disney damsels in distress and Hollywood’s collection of toxic bachelors who I happened to date in real life. Shocking. The part of me who believed in Jane Austen’s romance was constantly hacked by reality: no one seemed to fit me. The truth is I didn’t manage (not even once) to change the bad boys and, sadly, they remained archived, unsolved projects. As for the good-in-paper types, I felt stuck, paralysed by the fear of stepping away from something I already had and take a risk on any type of change. While I was considering the what if within the what ifs, time was not making me wiser, and my soulmate was lost out there without Google Maps (and possibly a 2% battery left).
Then, one day, caught by surprise, I received this song link. It was Sinatra whistling “I’ve got you under my skin” and man, I have not managed to shake it off yet. That song turned into a late night bowl of instant noodles (my favourite food ever since) followed by a bunch of playful kisses hidden in the darkness. I can’t tell precisely when love started, I just knew that was the start of something I had never experienced before (I forbid myself to quote High School Musical but if you know, you know). The love of my life made it to its final destination. I found someone capable of untangling my feelings. Someone who I admired profoundly and with whom I could share my deepest fears right after my goofy jokes. We could eat pizza and laugh with our mouths full and be stunned by how love can make sex so damn good. He would smile at me when I cried watching the news and I would write all about him in my secret notebooks (hush-hush location never to be revealed).
Now, reality check, this is not a romcom, and following the “and they lived happily ever after” there’s the “she ran from his car and locked herself in the bathroom”. Well, yes, I’m pretty explosive. We could safely say that 95% of our arguments start because of me (quite an accomplishment, I may say). And yes, I’ve wanted to strangle him many times but, in every single argument, behind every tear that I dropped, hidden in the midst of every hurtful word… love was there. Love has been there since the very beginning. From time to time it’s shaking its head as in “can you kids please drop it so we can get going with our plans”. But it’s undeniable, unbreakable. And suddenly, all the corny movies and poems and Pinterest quotes make perfect sense. I’ve realised it is awfully difficult to define love (just Google its definition, it’s beyond depressing). That’s because love changes into countless shapes and intensities, but there is some invisible continuity in it that makes it last forever. There’s this saying that what we can see is temporary and only the unseen stays eternal. Well, between you and me, and, at the risk of trying to rationalise the irrational, that’s it folks. Love is what remains when you dispose of everything else.
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