Meditations on love

I know love.

Love is when you’re willing to die for someone, like in the film “Titanic.” Love is when you say, “I love you.” Love is giving someone the best life has to offer.

That’s why I wasn’t all that sure if my parents really loved me. They never said “I love you” until I said it first. They didn’t buy me expensive things that everyone else in my class had. The girls around me had branded shoes, gigantic pencil cases the size of notebooks, and did sports without worrying about the cost. In the school I attended every single day, everyone else seemed to have everything. And even if I already had a lot, I could only focus on what I lacked.

I was a kid. I didn’t know any better. I couldn’t help wishing I had those things, too. When you’re a parent, you want your child to have only the best. Didn’t my parents love me, too? Why couldn’t I have the same things? I thought that perhaps my friends’ parents gave them more because they loved them more.

Since I only got new things when I earned high grades, I thought my parents only loved me when I excelled in school. Without realizing, I equated my worth–and my parents’ love–to material objects. I felt like I had to be smart to be loved.

When I failed at something, I hated myself passionately, as if I were worth less than the dirt on the street. I started hating myself for feeling that I didn’t have enough when I was clearly blessed to have privileges others didn’t have.

Then, one day, an incredible thing happened. I saw love in the kitchen window. It was my mother who deeply enjoyed her sleep and yet woke up early every morning to cook my breakfast and pack my lunch for school.

I saw love in the car window. It was my dad. He would drive me to school and my gymnastics classes, then work during the day.

Buying something for someone isn’t the only way to show them love. I realized that my parents said “I love you” every day through their actions. When I expected them to hand me the stars, they gave me the stars in their eyes, the sweat and tears of many years. I wanted the world, but I already had the universe in my home. The love that has been poured into me, the love that has formed me—every day it surrounded me so much I almost failed to notice it was there at all.

There are thousands of expensive things out there. But in the vast fabric of time and space, I only have one mother and one father. I could travel from one end of the globe to the other, but I will never be able to find anyone who loves me, cares for me, or worries about me more than my parents. When the world was made blurry by my tears, seeing their faces made me see things clearly again. And that was infinitely, inimitably, indisputably more precious.

How foolish I had been to think there was only one way to show love.

Love was in the way my mom stayed at the dining table long after everyone else had left, so I didn’t have to eat alone. She’s been afraid of dogs since childhood, but I begged for one for years, and she eventually relented. Now she lets him cuddle by her side and sneaks him food under the dining table.

Love was in the security guard’s smile every morning when I crankily went to school. It was how my friend and I doodled funny drawings between classes, and how she tapped me awake from my nap when the teacher arrived. Love was how another friend called me throughout the pandemic, so we could study together despite being kilometers apart.

Love is in the things people say and also in the things they don’t. It’s about saying words of encouragement as much as holding back mean words in moments of anger.

Love is not meant to impress. It is consistently showing up, putting in the effort in the long, unheralded journey. Love is adjusting to one another. Love is doing the dishes even when it’s inconvenient.

Love comes in different forms. When it is liquid or solid, we can see and feel it. When it is gas, it is invisible—but still there. Love, like water, sustains life. Even when unseen, it sustains the heart.

But I’m still young. I probably still don’t know what love is.

Maybe I had to love myself first. Love is giving myself the same grace I so readily gave others. Love is when, even if I make a mistake, I don’t call myself stupid. I pat myself on the back for working hard and think about what I can improve. I don’t have to be the best, I just have to do my best. Love is being able to tell myself that it’s okay, that it’s not a big deal, that everything will be fine even if it feels like my whole world is falling apart. I’m worthy even on the days I feel most imperfect.

Once I realized this, I was able to open my eyes to a new sky, a new love, a new life.

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Margarita Beatrice Uy Cabochan, 20, is a third-year student at the University of the Philippines Diliman.