The stories we share often include a lot of narrative on how we extricate important moments in our life. Moments and synopsis of memories as embarrassing and life worthy as we may remember it, but still we carry it in our hearts and continue to treasure and grow with them as we get older. We share a part of ourselves to any one we meet (sometimes unusually to a stranger), sometimes a soul to soul conversation that left us speechless and continue craving for that same feeling of belongingness and familiarity.

We can’t explain why we felt that way for her/ him and how it happened, but still it did. And we - for the better part of it, as we grow aligned to the person; who we tell our most sacred inner thoughts, show our most quirky, eclectic sides without too much thought about whether the person would judge us, shower them with our special time, and consequential talk to let them in our daily routine. And before you know it, we become attached to this rather meaningful unique someone whom we chose to let shared a secret pages and wrote them on our lives with special connotation - a person who we share some physical and emotional appreciation, a kind of trust and acceptance for one another’s flaws and misgivings. A special bond indeed and we eventually called them our special person, (give each other mushy-gooey nicknames) - as someone we loved. Perhaps wrote off for the most part of it, a kind of love specially aligned to that same ideology we may or could have said “lover”.

When in reality a lover or love can be described in many forms, translated into many gestures and sometimes science co notates it to pheromones released in our body. The measure of it is still transcendental and matched the face of our needs and especially normal for us humans to experience from the first time that we were born until our very last breath.

It is so magnificent and such a heartfelt experience to read in books and adore in romance movies that sometimes I envied of sexual tension revered on Hollywood romance, those buttered-up emotion’s written by songwriters and sang into the industry of music. The same way we still sing “Can’t help falling in love with You” which became the biggest romantic song in the time of Elvis Presley (1960’s) and still be relevant to our generation. And in the most part, the hopeless romantic in us thought we want that, we hear a song and never the less we can’t help but relate to that same lyrics, mourn with the actors, cry over unrequited love, feel the scene and sometimes the words from a book leaping out from the pages -ripping our hearts out and sucking our tears dry.

What I want to say is I never experienced that or I haven’t given love much thought until I became 16. Maybe a late bloomer perhaps or thrown by the distinction and question. Am I normal? Sure I’ve thrown on the words I love you hear in there to a close friend but never to an extent of capsulated hopeless romance and coming of age films that I have seen on the big screen. But maybe we over indulged in those romantic scenes exaggerated by the Hollywood actors and pretty great acting skills, idealization of “THAT” kind of heterosexual relationships and character emotional development that we see on K- Dramas. But then again maybe it’s just me. Maybe the culprit was not all the Hollywood, maybe it’s just me all along. And then the preference came to view and that gets me thinking, maybe love is not over exaggerated, maybe drama and romance it not that bad. Maybe love is meant to be the same way we love our pets, our dogs. But a lover itself runs deeper- Another human being that cares, or have the same values, who do the same weird things we do and we called it “love”. Maybe it is simple as that, maybe we over idealize, maybe your just picky, maybe you just have high standards, just be with him already “ wag ka nang maarte” you’ll fall for him eventually. .. all those “maybe’s” but nobody ever told me. Life and love is everywhere and we never really have to replicate love on a person, love doesn’t come face to face in the form of romance cuddling, kissing , touching or the intimacy of sexual pursuit of the body;where a person ruled by libido acts on it.

Maybe we go through these dating apps in hopes for that idealization of romance, but our idealization gets thrown into the window once sexual intercourse is known, and be given light into the context of those you swipe right and chatted with. It could be replicated in movies but the feeling itself can only be translated into those bits and pieces from movie scenes. Because we never experience it the same way, each and every one of us differs from the love we know and give, differ from how many lovers and kind of love we receive. What kind of intimacy do we crave, maybe that’s what makes it hard, it's hard to find someone whose on the same page as you are, who marches to the beat of the same drum you hear. It’s such a complex piece of subject that we talked about in our daily lives yet we do feel it everywhere. Fall in love with sceneries , experiences, places we have never visited before yet fell in love instantly.

I am here to tell you not to complicate yourself through label and magnify every little thing you thought you knew about love. But look through a bigger picture of why we may fall in love. Let our questions be asked not through sexual impulse, let our series of interaction be filled with genuine conversation. Let's all be emphatic human being because it is already a messed-up world we live in. Just for once in the topic of the messy dating world, let's all be humans, not ruled by libido but with the desire to have a “lover” sharing a thousand cherished mementos in our lifetime.