A little love story

Love is definitely a very overused word. We hear a lot of ideas and perspectives on this. But when I think of love, I think I have really high expectations. Expectations that one would say are hard, or even impossible to meet in the generation we live in. To me, this emotion is more than just affection, commitment and intimacy. Love is a feeling that is indescribable and that according to me is the most beautiful part of it. It is being sure about that one person even while you are unsure of what you feel. Love is the clarity amidst the confusion that comes along with it. How would one ever know if it is love for one does not even know what love really feels like until they actively experience it. I for one am unsure of what being in love with a man would really feel like. I still believe that when I find the one, the rest of the world is going to simply blur out. When I look at him, time itself is going to walk at 0.5x. I believe I shall find that someone who is going to shield us from the rest of the world, silence all the noise in the background, hold my hand and walk away with me leaving everything behind. As unrealistic as this sounds, I truly believe in this and there’s no reason not to do so after witnessing the most magnificent love between my birth-givers. I would consider myself to be most fortunate if I end up with someone who would give me a tenth of the love that they have for each other.

Now, my parents have had a very rebellious love story but they still to this day deny that they were in love before they married each other. Every time I listen to how they ended up together, I wonder if I will ever be able to so selflessly be in love with another. Their story fascinates me and so I shall share the same with you, my fellow hivers.

So back in the 1990s, my mum was working at a firm where her best friend worked with her too. My mum’s best friend was dating a man who was my dad’s best friend. Every time this couple met after their work hours, they would take my mum and dad along to keep them company. That’s how they met each other and gradually ended up falling in love. The couple would tease both of them and there came a point where they pushed them to take it further and get married. Well, the irony is that a few years after my parents were married, the other couple who were married too separated.

Now, my mum’s family was looking for suitable men to arrange her marriage with but she rejected them all citing random reasons. She then managed to introduce my dad to her family and they agreed to meet with his family in order to take it forward.
Now here’s where the twist in the cute little story happens. My mum’s family planned a visit to my dad’s house to have a chat with his parents. When they are almost at the house, my mum’s mum, my granny notices her aunt’s house right before my dad’s place. So, granny pays her aunt a visit first. Apparently, my granny’s aunt and my dad’s dad had had a family feud for over 10 years and avoided each other at all costs. There had been wars between the two families and none of them would talk to each other from more than a decade. My dad’s dad, my granddad when he noticed my granny meet his enemy neighbor, he flew into a rage and rejected the proposal even before meeting my mum. He did not want to have any relationship with the woman. He further threatened my dad that he’d be thrown out of the house and would lose all relationships with his family in case he chose to disobey him.

As heartbroken and sad my dad was about the incident, he chose to stand up for his love. He chose to leave his house if that’s the only way he could marry the love of his life. He packed his bags and moved out to marry my mum.

His parents did not show up at the wedding. It broke him but there wasn’t much he could do about it. The conditions they then lived in after the wedding were terrible as they had no proper job or even a decent place to live in. Financially and emotionally, they were going through a very hard phase but they stuck to each other and got over it all. My dad had no contact with his family until five years later. This is when I was three and they had completed building their little dream home, they decided to go meet his family and invite them to the house warming ceremony. They were terrified because my dad’s dad was a very stern man. They took me along too. To their surprise, he was really happy to see us. He accepted us and the family was whole again.

I have witnessed between them the purest form of selfless love where they have always put the other first. In good times and bad, they truly were there for each other. They have always been ready to go all out and sacrifice for the better of the other. This is the kind of love I seek - the type of love that makes you forget the consequences of the sacrifices you make for the other, the kind that enables you to do all the stupid little things nobody in their sane minds would do just to bring that smile on their face. I want to be foolishly in love.