Some Notes on Falling in Love

While cleaning my room earlier, I found an old diary I kept in my freshman year at the university. It was an old moleskine, my first one, but only the first fourteen or so pages have any writing in them. Be kind; I was seventeen when I wrote this, so do expect it to sound a little emo-ey, as odious as it is.

6/21/06

I am keeping a diary for the first time in what seems like many years. Why? Well, since I am in college already I thought it would be nice to record my thoughts for once. Would be nice to reminisce on these first few days of independence after my graduation. I sat through my first classes yesterday-- two straight sessions of English. Well, I am quite excited about it: I've never seen so many people enthusiastic for class! Unlike High School, where everyone just slept. For literature yesterday, our homework was to write an essay about love--I know, right? So soon?-- to be submitted next Monday.

I keep thinking about the subject in my head, and as a result, I lost a bit of sleep over it: not good, since my first class starts at 7:30 a.m. The first time I really fell in love with someone was just a little over one year ago. It didn't end well. Not at all. I expected myself to cry, but didn't. Maybe because it was just an emotion? Then again, emotions... just play on our other emotions. Maybe I wasn't really in love? Maybe I just knew from the start that it was not meant to be? But what does it mean to fall in love, in the first place? One of the girls in my class who sits next to me told me that it was impossible to go through life without falling in love even once. I told her that I did, but also that I accepted it so quickly. She told me that I was still immature [but in a kind manner of course]. That I haven't felt how beautifully sad it was to have had and lost, and haven't had the courage yet to escape from myself. Or something like that.

I think I will attack my essay from that angle. I think, to have fallen in love, is in the end to be thankful to that someone-- for completing me, for giving me hope, and also, and most importantly I think, for destroying me. Thank you for building me up, and for tearing me down; I am now whole. I now know what it means to have everything, and lose it all in a blinding flash. I know, it doesn't really make sense. But who says falling in love even made sense in the first place? Someday, I hope I will be given by God the grace to understand all of these terribly confusing things.

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Five years later, I think the line that resonates most with my present self is: "Thank you for destroying me", which I underlined above.  Not the kind of brutal, industrial, even clinical destruction so prevalent in society today; but rather, more like the destruction of a beautiful glass sculpture, which cannot help but radiate, refract, and reflect the light which hits it.