I recently just came across an Instagram reel suggesting romance films for different types of love. The creator separated love into three categories: love that hurts, love that’s fleeting, and love that changes you. For the last couple of years, whenever I’ve thought about love my immediate reaction brings me to think of one particular instance, one particular person. I think of this person and these memories fondly, appreciatively, and in a bittersweet light, but it wasn’t always this way. I would categorise this love of mine as love that changed me, though back when it was fresh it would have also fallen under love that hurts. When I think about it more, it was also love that was fleeting – while creating these boxes and categories to better put it into words, love does not need to fit into these compartments. In fact, it cannot.
There’s a reason why such a high volume of culture (in music, writing, poems, etc.) follow or surround the subject of love. Love, as an emotion, is elusive and vague, yet everyone comes to understand it – or some form of it – at some point in their life. I also think that it doesn’t need to be a mutually agreed upon feeling, experience, or definition; love is what you decide it is, for better or for worse. When I was in middle and high school, I didn’t believe in love. My parents have always had a strange-but-typical-of-Asian-families relationship, in which it seems that they stick together out of obligation for their offspring and the peace of the family, but do not harbour genuine affection for each other (maybe once, but certainly not after I was born). This is what I grew up with as my blueprint for marriage, which was my equivalent for love. As I grew older, I believed that all relationships would end up like this. That love, marriage, was a chore. I’d always told myself that I’d only ever believe in true love if I fell in love.
And then I did. Although, now that it’s been eight years, I can accurately analyse and determine that while the love I felt was platonic, possessive, intense, unique – it was not romantic love. At the time, for someone who was 14 years old, it was simply novel. Now, though? Thinking of love, I think of my family, K and J and FS and A, my other friends, all the cities and countries and streets I’ve fallen in love with.. but most frequently, I think of JM (for the sake of ‘privacy’, not that anyone reads this, even the initials have even been changed).
I would consider JM to be my “first love”; this will be someone I tell my children about, that I tell every new person I meet about, that I will remember. It only took me about a month to fall deeply, wholly, consumingly in love with him – which, for me, was shockingly fast. It felt violating, in a way. Am I that fickle with my feelings, I thought? Am I this easily convincible, do I have such low standards, I thought? No, I know the truth, I know the kindness, the attentive behaviour, the consideration, the smiles, the gentle teasing, the this song is my new favourite, I think you’ll like this one, and the what‘s your day looking like? do you have time in the evening?, the I’m not free until night but are you okay, I can come now for thirty minutes if you need me? The gentle caring that brings tenderness and tears – fit like two puzzle pieces, a key in its lock. Belonging. Rightness. My best friend.
Once, in one of the many nights we would stay up to do “work” together, I vividly remember: me, laying on the floor. Him, sitting on the piano bench. Legs caging mine, feet pressed tightly like sardines in a can. New Daniel Caesar album playing. Always.
“Do you want kids?”
“Yeah, I feel like I’d get bored in my marriage without them. The change would be good, right?”
“What? Why do you feel like you need change? You should be marrying your best friend.. as in, every day you’re able to make each day exciting and fun and novel. Why would you want a change?”
Of course, this is an abridged version of the conversation, but the gist is there. From then on, I changed my mind about the necessity of having children for the sake of my relationship, because I agree. And mostly, because in that moment in time, laying on the floor underneath the Steinway piano, with my feet pressed between yours, I realised that in a life which I spent with you, my best friend, by my side – I wouldn’t seek out any change. The great love of my life, my best friend, made for me, made for me, my best friend, my best friend. All words, no words, nothing is quite enough to describe this. Young love? Perhaps. Perhaps music, perhaps scents, perhaps flowers – but no words. No words to describe this, to describe you.
There are no words to describe the feeling in the days after, the way I could barely breathe, removal of one of my lungs; maybe I became too dependent, maybe I relied on your constant presence too much, maybe I felt the immense, yawning absence of a friend I considered closer than all others. Everything was you, and suddenly you were in everything, and I hated it. It was then I think I understood that love could also maim you just as much as it could construct and heal you. It was also then I realised that some loves could also be as ephemeral as the bloom of irises. At one point, it was indistinguishable to me where you ended and I began. It was then you wove yourself into the fibers of my own self, I think. I am not me without you, both with and without the bliss and the torment. I hope I always remember you, what you’ve done for me, what I was like with you, and what you were like with me.
To be loved, not like a habit, not like a chore, but more like the way I loved you, the way I love you, the way I cherish you. To be loved like one who is always in the mood for love.
iris garden 