Jeepney Press Yellowbelle Duaqui

Finding "The One" by Yellowbelle Duaqui

Since the love month is here, why don’t we talk about love? Yes, love. This topic that has made billions of people happy, and miserable too. It has also eluded some people, leaving them wanting, even hurt, and wounded for life. Some challenged society’s seeming overrated perception on romantic love as the most celebrated path to the attainment of personal happiness. Others even went on to redefine romantic love in their own terms and came to build and love their best selves along the way. After all, with break-ups, divorce and legal separation here and there, only God’s love and self-love seem to be the only reliable sources of love. Some are also lucky to have genuine parental love as their seemingly perpetual source of love.

As cliché would have it, “different folks, different strokes”. Finding love is a unique journey for everyone. Some arrive unexpectedly, and accidentally, causing you sleepless nights, tons of kilig, unexplained smiles, imaginings, and that feeling of giddiness and excitement that no other person can manage to make you feel. As a song goes, “There’s color everywhere”. This person is the living and walking testimony of the best qualities you look for a person: a vision, a clear plan, good looks, impressive intellect, and a caring nature. This person will thus become the wo(man) of your dreams. But sometimes, love doesn’t feel this way. It can sometimes be your good old wing wo(man) who stays with you, in bad times or in good times. This could be one who would rather put up with you despite bad times and decide to stay put and never leave. This is someone whom you know so well, their victories and successes, including their failures and weaknesses. There are boring days (and there’s definitely none of the giddiness and rush of elation that sudden love brings), but this reliable love gives comfort in the same way that your old pair of slippers and worn-out shirt gives you. It is familiar love. It is home. This person, hence, is the wo(man) of your habit.

Further, there are times you meet someone who reminds you a lot of someone you know, someone very close to you. This person also gives you excitement in the beginning, and slowly reminds you of a person from your past, from your family, from your deepest childhood memories. And then, this person causes you unprecedented pain, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and teaches you a lesson or two as to what love truly is, by breaking your heart. It teaches you that love is so much more than attraction, excitement, and romantic spark. Love, more importantly, is a shoulder to cry on, a hug that calms your fears, a listening ear that absorbs your pain, a caring hand that squeezes yours, telling you that all shall be well in the end. This person is your soul family, whom you accidentally met amid your personal storm.

On days like this, when everyone celebrates the love they found, you go deep inside yourself and reflect on what love truly means. And at the end of the day, finding love is not just about finding “The One”. “The One”, after all, might never come. Finding love can sometimes be just finding the best version of yourself and loving it. From feeling miserable for not having found your “The One,” always remember that finding yourself and being yourself is much more valuable than losing yourself in the process of trying to find a match. As a colleague at work once told me, “Couples don’t go to Heaven; individuals do”.

Yellowbelle Duaqui / Jeepney Press