While scrolling on Tiktok, a couple showed up on my For You Page doing the "Love Is" challenge. While watching them, with jealousy, it made me wonder: How come at young age they experience the kind of love that seemed so pure and genuine? A love built so strong that seemed like a cupid-planned?
The time when the Part 2 of the challenge showed up, questions kept formulating in my mind, and my heart was now seeking for answers.
How come they were saying moments, words, and experiences that felt like it all came from a romance book or a movie?
And wait—were romance books and movies became the standard of love or is it the other way around? Or is it.. Maybe they became the standards of love beacause that kind of love literally exist in real life anyway? That the author experienced them and wanted to tell the story?
After all, life immediately becomes a story as the hands of the clock move—and life will even amazingly sound like a fiction, a story-made, when you share them. They're just sometimes too good to be true.
Which is crazy...
Because if I am going to tell my part of the story, it will sound like it to the others too—a life so magical to live.
I have never experience a romantic love yet, but that does not mean I have no idea, for I am the living product of it. And this life taught me that love is..
Love Is when my Parents hold hands while sleeping.
Not just that, because love is when Papa doing the household chores if my Mama is not feeling well, giving all the money he earned to my Mom, the the non-stop "hatid-sundo" up until now, and when my parents let each other go anywhere if they want to enjoy life once again like they are still teenagers.
Love is the smell of the sweat and the sound of my father's snores.
Love is a responsibility. Having a family at young age is I know, for sure, in another level of parenthood. And them living it up and proving that they can do something to make this family live better, is to be proud of.
Love is the sound in the kitchen before we wake up.
Love is the action. Doing something. Love is when my Mom waking up before us to prepare our breakfast before going to school. When she does everything she can for us to have less work and not be late.
Love is when my brother picks me up.
Love is when he is always free every time I needed a ride home. When he shows up after texting him I wanted to go home after the "gala".
Love is the tapping of wet towel when I was sick.
Love is a care. It is my sister taking care of me when I had fever to cool my body down.
Love is letting us experience the things they missed when they were young.
Love is when my cousins plan for a family outing to bond. Letting everyone else in the family experience the things they once just dreamt of. Love is me receiving my first chocolate, flower, and a boquet from them. The first hug after knowing I had a breakdown. The laughs we shared after bantering.
Love is my Grandparents and Titas taking care of us if our parents are not around.
Love is feeling that parental love from people who are not your parents. I am fortunate enough to have someone like that around me—I mean, people.
I grew up as a dependent woman, something not everyone is proud of sharing. However, with that, I know I grew up with enough love and care. It is something that I will always show and shout to the world, and will always whisper to God for having such blessing.
With what I have, it fuels my desire to try hard to be and always better every time. So as knowing what I deserve—it may be something, treatment, or someone.
What was I jealous for, by the way? When I have and still experiencing the undying kind of love.
So when someone comes for a romance, it will always be the footprint. If that someone's love for me doesn't fit with theirs, it's not for me. For I know what I deserve; for I know how I should be treated. The day will come, and the wait will be worth it.
For profession. For me. For romance. For life.
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