A dirty thing called ‘Love’
By: Christina Keslie
Tags: Relationships, Pain, Love, Loneliness, Dating

Love is kissing her lips at midnight the same night she screamed at a service staff for no particular good reason. Love is picking up a trail of clothes he left in your room, although the laundry basket is clearly way within reach.

Love is lying in bed for the first time, holding each other’s soft, gentle gaze, feeling immensely tired from staying awake, but not wanting to rest your eyes, fearing you can never recreate this moment. It’s insisting on doing the dishes together, even when one of you offers to do it alone.

Love is the exact moment he admitted to sleeping with someone, and you going through a mental list of what-the-fuck-you-ever-did to deserve this. Love is accepting that she has been thinking of someone else every morning, late into the night.

It’s the fights, the ugly crying, the running away, over a stupid hill right beside the Yishun sports stadium in the middle of the night, forgetting why you’re angry in the first place, anger escalating, screaming like a mad person. It is tolerating insults, the ones stemming from their insecurities. It’s the desperation of doing so much, more than your best, and still left with little to no reciprocation.

It’s funny how I am writing about love. Even while typing and reading the word l-o-v-e, I cringe a little. I spent my last relationship of 4 years not being able to utter that word as though it was a dirty word, because he believed actions speak louder than a romanticised concept of love. I agree to that. How people can utter these 3 words everyday puzzles me. It’s like squeezing a lemon over and over again even though there’s no more juice. Now when these words are thrown to me, I feel nothing. I block it out like an adblocker. It’s not that I consciously want to block it out. It’s just hard to believe it.

I am not a writer. I am not an expert. Neither am I in a relationship. The more accurate depiction would be that I am out of love. I mean, hell, I don’t even believe in it. I want to, don’t get me wrong. I see it everyday around me. But witnessing a mutual connection with someone that will actually work out is like finding a good bowl of laksa with hum. (Okay, bad example, maybe I didn’t look hard enough for that laksa. Reccs, please?)

I apologise in advance for wasting your time if you are looking for advice, hope or optimism because all I can offer is my sporadic and pessimistic train of thought, that might or might not make any sense. A lengthy extract of what you might find in my diary, if I had the discipline to keep one, filled with typos and grammatical errors.

People are always looking for the one. They look for this idealised relationship, one that promises of intellectual conversations, an arm candy you can show off to friends, mind-blowing sex and cuddles, a soulmate that will understand you just by the twitch of your brow, someone relatively doing well in their career, the one that your parents will finally like.

If there’s such a perfection, it would be happening in 2050, where we just pay a subscription for customisable AI. I’ll be kinda old by then, but always a fan of sci-fi, so put me on that waiting list for beta testing, please.

Well, with all these idealisation and expectations, no wonder the person you date is gonna tragically let you down. There’s no space to be great, when you expect perfection.

So spare me, rid the assumptions you make of my Instagram page. I am not the person I portray myself in colour graded pictures. I am in love with film, but my life is not merely a carousel of loosely curated photos. Social media is a glimpse of what I am. I am not just all that.

I was brought up an extrovert, but more than anything now, I appreciate comfortable silence. I romanticise about the rain, sometimes a little too much. I tear easily at every emotional scene in the movies. It’s nice to have attention, but at times, I want to melt and merge into the wall paint behind me. I still think of the people who let me go and wonder why.

Get to know me. Not a hundred questions of what I like in bed, gosh, we can save that for future conversations. No, really get to know me. Ask me why I like fluffy trees, even though I’d frown a little, struggling to fully explain myself while trying to sound poetic.

Be vulnerable with me, as I will be with you, because that’s god damn strength. And that’s how we know if I can handle the softest, squishiest sides of you. And if I can’t, I am sure someone else will.

The process of finding your one true love (if it exists) is not something that should be rushed. Something I need to constantly remind myself. It will not magically bring you happiness. Correct me if I am wrong, but you will not feel like you are suddenly complete. It’s pain. Tears, confusion, countless arguments about why the fuck are we not meeting enough, or if we are meeting too much. Why can’t you do that one thing for me? Having to explain why you would rather play Dota 2 for 5 hours than to sit through 1 hour of West World with me.

Yes, it’s a solution for ridding emptiness.

But it’s also choosing one special person to suffer with. And I guess there’s some merit and romance to that. It’s picking the kind of demons you are willing to fight and, or embrace. It’s the assurance you won’t spend Christmas alone or feeling a little salty hanging with all your friends that are attached. It’s not having to wonder if there are things so wrong about you, that you don’t deserve to love or be loved. It’s the hope and idea of finally finding someone who will understand you. Or if not, accept with a light humour, the strangest parts of you that you don’t even welcome yourself.

There’s no shame in taking a little longer. To figure things out a little slower. Hold on to yourself and remember the serenity of being alone.