I have been stuck with the idea of love since I was kid. It didn’t help that I watched disney and local TV series such as FLAMES, Gimik and TGIS among others. I got even more stuck with the idea when I started dating.
At first, I used to pattern love on how I saw my parents “love each other” growing up. I thought that love was a one shot deal wherein meeting the first would last an eternity. As you probably have guessed, I was doomed. People with expectations such as mine are bound to be doomed.
To date, I’ve only had 2 exes, but the dates to boyfriend ratio seems to be 19.5 is to 1. At this rate I have so much more dating to do to get another shot at love. Haha! But the thing is, I am now sure how vague a target love is.
I got to meet a lot of people of different ages, cultures, and beliefs. And so far it’s interesting how they seem to have all things figured out, but the way I see it nobody has it figured out.
To wit, internet posts on love in Facebook and Youtube contain countless contradictions. For instance, my favorite love idea is from an FB post that essentially says love is a choice, not a feeling.That falling in love is a passive action but being in love is something active. That love isn’t complicated. You just have to choose.
Then in another FB post entitled Secondhand Love, as it fairly encourages readers to not settle for someone who considers you as a second option, it also poses this idea of love as something beautiful and perfect and that anything besides this is substandard; and therefore, we shouldn’t stop aiming for that perfection–which somehow says that it isnt a choice but a quest to find true love.
I personally think the latter thoery has been used a thousand times to break up with someone or cheat on someone simply because the “right one” came along.
(Sings: Oh it’s sad to belong to someone else when the right one comes along… lalalala!)
And though people who broke hearts of others in the name of love seem to deserve hell and a cursed life, ironically they actually sometimes find true love, leaving the one who loved them broken (i.e. cheats on wife of 5 years then stays in love with the one he cheated with for 20 years to forever).
Sometimes people find their true love, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they have already found it then decide it isn’t the one. Others, find multiple true loves.
With all these in mind I have at least placed my fear in love. Loving someone romantically is like a carousel where you try on different ponies until you find the right one. But even when you do, it isn’t an assurance that you wouldn’t want to try the other ones. Even more, you sometimes just go round and round the carousel then get back on the same pony that you left. There are times the ride makes you really dizzy that you’d rather get off than find the pony for you. Note that some are the ponies while others are the riders looking for the ponies.
These are just “theories” behind and observations of love by a guy like me that was disneyfied early on. Reality is even more complicated if not interesting.
I used to think there are surefire ways to love. I used to think that when you give it your best, all will be fine. I was wrong.
There is nothing to figure out about love. There is only trying and experiencing it. It’s either you ride the carousel or you don’t.
I guess it also is not about the journey if my carousel idea works for you. I guess it’s all about the getting on and off of it. That you can’t expect love to bring you places but instead hope it gives you a chance to hold on or to be held, to let go or to be let go of.
I’m convinced that more often than not it isn’t being dumped or being alone in love that scare us. It’s the uncertainty. There is nothing new with what I’m saying. It’s just that now I know what other people have been talking about love. Now I know what I’m scared of.
(Photo from a box of donuts I ate)
Totoy Guro 
