My first encounter with love was fiction. A fairytale narrative, perfectly woven with colour, butterflies and magic. It was this featherweight flutter of excitement, stretched to a point of exaggeration by romance novels and glossy magazines. You know, the typical scenario: Boy meets girl, their perfect bodies, falling hopelessly and maybe awkwardly for each other; then riding off into the sunset with an eternity of happiness chasing at their heels.
And for many years, I carried on, however naively, with this picture perfect illusion of love; helpless, breathless, can’t live without you kind of love. And even though there were tiny fragments of reality that tried to puncture this web of fantasy, I held on, dearly, desperately, and ruthlessly rejecting the pedestrian context of responsibility, payment of bills and the entrapment of monogamy.
Yet, as I sit to write this, my mind is a clutter of anecdotes, each prodding, questioning, even mocking my previously held ideals. The latest of which is this couple who I met very recently.
They are not the typical ‘power couple’ strutting along a runway to the eager applause of well-wishers. They rather looked to be in their sixties. Granted, they still carried a certain kind of cuteness had been weaned by time and graceful aging. Anyway, they walked in, holding hands in what could almost be described as a boring trudge. For one, it was the usual overly careful pace of older people; that gait and sense of unrushed dignity. But on the other hand, and perhaps more likely the main reason, I found that the man was visually impaired, and his wife, served as his guide, leading him by the hand with unfeigned devotion: prompting, smiling, matching him, gentle trudge after the other. Soldier, partner, helper…all at once.
I looked at them, and tears rushed to my eyes, a rebellious outburst of awe and guilt and something else I am yet to describe. I tend to cry a lot. Maybe that’s it, raw emotions furiously seeking escape. Or maybe it’s much simpler, like the sincerity of a love that has been stretched, thinned out and yet, stands strong. At least from what I could see.
It might sound shallow to think that something like a physical impairment is enough to tear people far apart in opposite directions. But you will agree that people have split for much lesser reasons. So yeah, people like this, tend to command my instant respect and admiration. How can they not? When they show time and again that love is not always this blossoming flower, blushing from the smile of the sun. Sometimes, it is persistent inconvenience. Resolute suffering. Like waiting 20 years for a child without thinking of the option of a younger woman with fresher blood and eager ovaries, or receiving the doctor’s report that a husband of less than 10 years will never be able to walk again. You know, basically, that staying resolve that is so rare these days. To stare the inconveniences and just decide to sit it out, refuse to just ‘up and leave’.
Of course, the scenarios don’t always have to be as grim as the crushing of limbs or deathly sentence. It can be as seasonal as the crash of a business or the loss of a job. Simple, yet requiring same level of devotion. These situations constantly ring with questions that tease, asking ‘Can you handle me? Are you ready? For better or WORSE?’
And because self-assessment is one of my greatest afflictions, I direct these questions to myself. The answer loiters around. And it breaks me. It leaves me both afraid and ashamed. I claw at my heart in search of nobility. I find none. Am I capable of such commitment? If my love is tested, will it reveal the ugliness that is my heart? Still no answer. It is possibly the result of a heart that has been trained not to think; to only feel; revel in the moment. But is that in itself not wrong? Should love not be a conscious thought? a constant striving, a grappling attempt at selflessness?
So why? why is love this fickle feeling, this fleeting hope? why does it have to be this non-calculative escape from reality?
Maybe this is why love dies? This inability to be substantive. Maybe this is why people shrink or retreat into distances. Because deep down we don’t think love through, for better or WORSE. So we drape on the context of pretense, until we become people floundering around, hiding our nakedness, claiming invulnerability.
But what if we start to think it through? Really think it through. What if before making that undying commitment; we search our conscience and brave the question ‘Am I really in this, for better or worse?’
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