“Love isn’t something that happens to you — it’s something that grows inside you, quietly teaching you that you’ve always had it.”
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you ever just catch people in love when they think no one’s looking? like, not the kind that’s all fireworks and cinematic lighting — i mean the small, quiet kind. the kind that slips through the cracks of routine and makes everything ache a little in the best way.
i’ve seen it. on jeepney rides, when someone holds their partner’s bag without being asked. at the market, when an old man fans his wife with a folded receipt because she forgot her pamaypay again. in the park, where kids share taho like it’s the most sacred thing they’ll ever hold. i’ve seen it in moments too short to explain and too real to ignore.
there’s something about it that makes me want to pause time, just to say, “see? it’s real.” because for so long, i thought love was something people only performed — something glossy, filtered, rehearsed.
i used to think it lived only in grand gestures. in the big things. but now i know: love also hides in delayed goodbyes, in missed train stops, in someone saying “text me when you get home.” and actually waiting for your reply.
it’s almost stupid how gentle it can be. like the universe whispering: “hey, not everything beautiful has to announce itself.”
i’ve seen it last decades — the kind that wrinkles together, the kind that holds hands at church not because it’s romantic, but because one of them can’t walk steady anymore. i’ve seen it end too, in silence, in tears, in soft goodbyes that feel more like mercy than endings. but even then, i’ve seen how love lingers. how it stains everything it’s touched. how even after it’s gone, you can still find it in the way someone looks at the sky like it still belongs to two people.
and i’ve seen it on myself, too — the way my eyes soften when i talk about the people i care for, even when i swear i’m over being soft. i’ve seen love bloom in the smallest corners of my chest, like moss growing between old concrete, stubborn and alive.
it’s everywhere if you look long enough. on buses. in laughter shared between friends who haven’t spoken in months. in a mom carrying her sleeping kid while the world rushes past.
and maybe that’s the thing, right? maybe love isn’t rare — maybe it’s just quiet. maybe it’s the background noise of life, the hum that never stops playing, even when we stop listening.
and i think that’s what i’ve seen it is really about.
not just witnessing love — but finally recognizing it for what it is: not a miracle, not a coincidence,
just something that’s always been there, waiting for us to notice.
and the thing about seeing love everywhere is — once you start noticing it, you start hearing it too.
it sneaks into songs you’ve heard a thousand times, and suddenly the lyrics feel heavier, like someone’s pressing a thumb against an old bruise. love starts sounding like echoes — like reverb, like something you can’t quite place but you feel in your throat anyway.
i’ve heard it in every song. in the ones that play too loud in tricycles. in the ones people hum under their breath while sweeping the floor. in the background of life, where it doesn’t even ask to be noticed. but every time i try to sing along, the words stumble out wrong. maybe because love, when it reaches me, always feels like it’s speaking a language i’m still learning.
they say music is universal, but love — love’s a dialect. it hits different depending on where you’ve been broken, on which silences you’ve learned to survive.
and yeah, sometimes it doesn’t answer when you call. sometimes you whisper into the void, please, just this once, and all you get back is your own voice, echoing like it’s mocking you. sometimes love shows up dressed as hope and leaves looking like a storm. sometimes it brings out the parts of you you swore you buried — the impatience, the jealousy, the smallness of needing to be chosen. but it also brings out the gentleness you didn’t know you had, the tenderness you thought you’d lost for good.
and maybe that’s what makes it so confusing — the way love holds contradictions so effortlessly. it’s both fever and comfort. both apology and prayer. one minute it makes you feel infinite, and the next you’re just some kid staring at the ceiling, wondering what you did wrong again.
i used to think if i studied it long enough — dissected every song, every movie, every poem — i’d eventually understand it. but maybe love isn’t meant to be understood. maybe it’s meant to be felt, like a melody you can’t explain but still hum anyway.
and lately, i’ve stopped trying to decode it. maybe i’m not supposed to know it all. maybe love’s meant to be a little blurry — the kind of thing you only catch in glimpses, like light leaking through curtains.
i think i’ve made peace with that. or at least, i’m learning to.
it’s funny how love looks so different when it’s not aimed directly at you. it’s softer somehow — less demanding, more human. i’ve seen it dance around the table in the shape of my friends’ laughter, their voices tumbling over one another like kids playing tag. the kind of joy that doesn’t need a reason. just warmth and noise and the comfort of knowing you’re understood without having to perform.
i’ve seen love in paper cups and half-finished meals. in shared fries, inside jokes that aged like wine, in the way someone always remembers to pull you back into the conversation when you start drifting into silence. love sits there too — patient, unbothered — like it knows it doesn’t need to announce itself to be real.
it’s there when someone saves you a seat, when they send a meme they know only you will get, when they walk you home without asking if you want company. love’s not a grand gesture, not always. sometimes it’s a hoodie lent out and never returned, or the way they still check up on you after you swear you’re fine.
and when i see it in others, something inside me breaks — in a good way. like watching the sun rise after a night you didn’t think you’d make it through. i used to think love was a thing reserved for the lucky, for people with easy smiles and unscarred hearts. but now, watching it bloom in everyone else’s hands, i realize maybe it’s not rare — maybe i just wasn’t ready to recognize it.
and it makes me cry sometimes, to think i’m finally able to give it back. to meet the same softness i’ve spent my life chasing and send it back into the world like light bouncing off a mirror. i’ve learned that love doesn’t diminish when shared — it multiplies. it echoes. it lives in the way my friends say “i love you” without saying the words. in the way i reply without speaking either. and somehow, that’s enough.
love gives to me in quiet ways. and finally — finally — i’m learning how to give it back.
but there’s a kind of ache that comes with realizing love isn’t forever — not in the way we’re taught it should be. you grow up thinking it’s a thing you keep, something solid, tangible, like a souvenir you get to carry for life. but love, i’ve learned, slips. it fades, forgets, reshapes. sometimes it grows old quietly beside you until one day it’s only a silhouette — something you recognize by outline, not memory.
i’ve seen it happen in small ways first. in friendships that dissolved without reason, in the warmth that thinned between two people who once swore always. i used to think that meant failure — that if love ended, it wasn’t real. but maybe love’s just something that keeps changing hands, something borrowed, never owned. someone picks it up again, breathes life back into it, and it starts over — just like that.
my mum and dad used to love each other once. i saw it in old photos, in home videos where they still laughed. but even that love, as good as it was, turned to silence one day. and still — it didn’t make me stop believing. if anything, it made me want to find it more. because if it could exist once, even for a little while, then maybe it could exist again, somewhere.
i’ve seen the films, read the books — every story teaching me that love is both the question and the answer, both the ache and the balm. and though i’ve stopped expecting a fairy tale, some part of me still hopes for the kind of love that feels familiar, the kind that doesn’t demand to be understood — just felt.
the search goes on and on, but i’m not chasing anymore. i’m walking slower now. learning that love isn’t something you find — it’s something you build, moment by moment, until you wake up one day and realize it’s already there, living quietly in your life.
and maybe it won’t last forever. maybe it’ll forget me one day, too. but if it does, i hope it remembers this, that when it passed through me, i tried to make it feel at home.
the more i look, the more i realize it’s never really been about the search. not about who finds me first, or who stays the longest, but about what love looks like when no one’s watching. it’s in the quiet things — the way i pour coffee for someone half-asleep, the way i still check if my brothers ate before i do, the way i forgive even when it still hurts. love was never missing. it was just waiting for me to notice it.
so, yeah. i used to think love had to arrive with grand gestures — with fireworks, or tears, or a name i’d write poems about. but sometimes it shows up soft. in laughter shared over nothing, in the silence between breaths, in the courage to start over again, even when the last ending bruised you. that’s love, too : the choosing, the trying, the staying.
of couese, sometimes fear still sneaks back in. it comes dressed as doubt, whispering, what if they leave? what if you’re too much again? too little again? but i’ve stopped letting fear be the only voice in the room. now, i answer it softly — maybe they will. maybe they won’t. but for now, they’re here. and for now, that’s enough.
it brings out the worst, brings out the best, but it’s mine to feel — all of it. the ache, the laughter, the warmth pressed between every almost and every goodbye. because i’ve seen it — in friends dancing around the table, in the way my brothers run to tell me stories, in how the world keeps loving, even when it’s tired.
and maybe that’s the secret — love was never meant to be hunted or hoarded. it was meant to be lived. and somewhere in my chest, beneath all the noise and the fear, it’s been here all along.
