There isn't any grand explanation about love and relationships but with how the media fed the young about what love should be like; exciting and in-heaven-we-go, abusive, star-crossed lovers, soulmates, the tragedy, the one whose love transverse time and universes.
And to be honest, all of this happened once to some of the people we've met, we have encountered, and we passed by on the streets. But I have seen my grandmother and grandfather— they're the monotonous boring couple living in the same house with their grandchildren. And when I see people cry about love that seems exciting because they'll never experience it, I cry with them too.
Because how lovely it seems to experience being loved in spaces where you are seen, loved in the most exciting part of this world, loved in every angle but here goes my grandparents—
Eating some meal my grandmother made, talking shit about the weather, the silence between my grandmother's unfunny joke, the repeated jokes because my grandfather laughed at it once, their tiny giggles in the middle of the night while they talk about our relatives' bad decisions, they take turns using the tv, they talk about the boring movies my grandmother chose, yes indeed, that my grandfather really has good taste in everything yet his wife, my grandmother, has this very odd taste in things and yet here they are, watching this movies and tv dramas together. They watch the 'Best The Voice Audition' they watch this movies noone is interested at, they talk about the government, and here I am, writing them—
The monotonous, sorific, bland them.
You don't hear them say I love you, they still make it a competition between each other when it comes to their children. They weren't perfect, they weren't rich but they were everything. I have seen my grandmother upset because of him, but she still went home after that.
People crave the exciting part— but I guess love is when you get used to the boring life together. When you got used to the silence, where each other's company is an equivalent to a million I love you's that the world has said.
The silence during the meal, the clashing of plates and spoons and forks, when she walked home back to him and still ate with him.
The boring—
The Silence—
How sorific life is,
How monotonous each passing day is,
How bland everything actually is.
There's no rollercoaster, blood-rushing excitement.
There's only a swing and you watch the day change to night and you go to sleep and when you wake up to a face you have seen from long ago, covered in wrinkles and eyebags, and weight gained through time, and still in the end, you chose another day with this boring shit life with this same person.
They are probably done with the butterflies now, I wonder what happened to them when they first met, when they were just starting life together, I wonder what did they do with the first time their relationship started tasting like water soaked under the sun, what did my grandmother think when she followed him everywhere leaving her hometown, I wonder what their definition of love is.
I don't ask them about it but it was fun watching my grandmother get pissed off at how annoying my grandfather is. And how she laughs at him, and I wonder what she'll feel when she has to relearn how to live without him, how to sleep without him, with her red eyes tired from staying awake I wonder what she'll feel when she wakes up without him.
The rollercoaster blood-rushing part of their lovelife will start when they have to live without the other one. Bloodrushing, excruciating pain, a paper cut, a bad news from the doctor, when houses starts crumbling during a typhoon, when your heartbeat misses them type of love, type of sacrifice.
Coffee in the morning, and you during the evening.
The silence inbetween, and the empty space on your bed.
May love not always be the bullshit excitement you get the first time, may love not always be a tragedy, may love not be this hurtful but it is, over the years of getting used to the boring life with them, on getting used to the sounds they make, when everything unfamiliar becomes your home, when the trail you walk starts leading you to them, when all that you've ever known is them, and goddamn, the world took away the best thing to your boring day— what a fucking tragedy.
To be chosen, to be loved. And to relearn life without them.
