This is what I know of Love

A few days ago, my lecturer asked my classmates and I what is the meaning of Love. It seemed like it was fate because I have just moved into the indifferent phase after a recent heartbreak (again!)… very recent, it was just two days before my lecturer asked us this question that I could hear my heart breaking.

So, I thought I want to take the safe way out, I want to write a very analytical concept about love, to show people as though I didn’t crave it. But my more dramatic side forces me to write something from my heart – at the time when I was writing, I thought that it was suppose to be in a written form, I did not know that my lecturer would soon ask me to read it out loud for everyone to hear, just wanted to share with you, this is what I wrote;

I think I don’t know what love is; I don’t how to describe it. But this is what I know of love;

I think, it is the feeling that I have whenever I think of my mother, it is the painful feeling that I felt, whenever I see my sisters are in pain. It is the pride when I know my brothers excel. It is the guilt that I feel, when I came to know of my father’s sacrifices and how I dare to call him unfeeling (my father is my hero!) It is the appreciation that I have for every drop of my mother’s sweat just to put clothes on my back.

It is the guilt that I felt every time I had to scold my nieces. It is the strangely warm/safe feeling that I have every time I think of my mother. It is the regret I feel whenever I think that I am to shy to hug my father. It is the guilt that I have when I have to tell my sister off when she wanted to call me during my lecture time. It is the guilt that I have every time I made my mother cry. It the breaking of my heart whenever I heard my nieces shouted my name to save them from whatever fear they are going through – be it a moving lorry or a dark room.

This is what I know of love – all those feelings.

Only a few people were called to read what they have written about love. I don’t know why my lecturer wanted to call me, before my turn – I have read what I wrote over and over again to practice my unfeeling-ness so that I wont cry when I read it out loud. But when it was my turn, I started to read, and I could not move on, I stopped at the word ‘mother’ and her image came to my mind. I felt a lump in my throat – I was about to cry. But I was determined to not cry in front of my whole judgmental classmates. I moved on, stopped every time when I reached at words like ‘Nieces, father, sisters or brothers’. The action of crying has been substituted to the major nervousness. My feet were shaking to the point that I can’t stand, I had to shake them to shake off the nerve in my feet. My hand were trembling to the point that my classmates in the front row were gaping. But I managed not to cry. Half of my classmates did not understand what I wrote because how i breath and stopped while i was reading it (mostly because i was trying not to cry), some of them came up to me and said ‘I nearly cried’. 

I just that – I cannot comprehend what love is. Being a major failure on relationships with girls – having my heart break time and time again by girls. So my family is the only reference of how I ‘feel’ when I love somebody. I think, those are the feelings that represent love – kinda morbid, but this is all I have.