On Love.

Let me tell you something. Up until not so many years ago, I didn't know what Love was. I couldn't say I knew what it was because, I really wasn't sure. I had not felt it, and I was pretty sure I did not receive it. I didn't witness Love. I thought, maybe Love was just something that happened in fairytales. That Love which makes the world go round, where was it? WHAT was it? I didn't know.

Then one day, I experienced grief. The sort of grief that makes you feel as if you would give up your own life just to make sure someone else got to experience the stuff they missed out on. Grief that makes you realise how fragile your universe is and how much you were willing to give up in the place of someone else. Knowing just how much you're willing to give up was the first component of love I learnt.

Later on, I experienced loss. Not the kind of loss that makes you grieve but the kind of loss that makes you always search for something because you'll never feel quite complete again. When you lose something that made you feel complete, you realise that the thing that made you whole was also a component that made you love.

Later on still, I experienced disappointment and regret which led to disarray. Feeling as if your whole world is crumbling makes you hold on to the things that matter most. I realised from this, Love doesn't always have to apply to the things you thought it applied to. Love was bigger than that.

Recently, I experienced loss again. It is strange to lose someone you thought never loved you. Never figured in your life much. Was always thought of with resentment. Someone whom you were told you should love but whom you couldn't love because you didn't quite know how to. Someone you didn't know how to love because you weren't sure they even wanted your love.

Then one day, that person is gone. Just like that. And you go through the motions of trying to grieve, to mourn, cry a little but you can't because you're still unsure if you love or were loved at all. All there is, is space and you don't really know what to do with that space.

But then it hits you. When you're standing in a room of people who were never quite sure if they were ever loved by this one person and yet there they were, filling up the room and filling up the space, when you watch them mourn something they're not even sure about...it hits you.

It's about filling the sudden space that gets left behind. It is understanding, that after all the wrongs done unto you, that you're still here, and they aren't and that your life is yours and in order to leave something behind, you must be good and kind and grateful to those who make you up. You must Love. Because it is the only thing worthwhile that you can leave behind.

And so I think, after all this, I finally found out what Love is. Love isn't about writing it down or saying it. Love isn't about expression. Love isn't even about feeling tingly or having people in your thoughts. Real Love, the Love that transcends everything else and makes your time on earth worthwhile, that Love...is a verb that fills up space.