When asked to write about first love, you might expect the tweetums stuff in grade school. The jittery feeling of a hand being held for the first time. That undying anticipation of a perfect first kiss. I’m not really gonna write about that, not exactly at least. What I’m gonna do is I’ll let you take a peek in a valuable part of my life. I’ll tell you about a man whom I first fell in love with when I was 18.

Not so long ago, I found myself in a relationship, without having the slightest idea that my partner would be the man who would sweep my heart away and snap me back to reality altogether. Initially I had strong feelings of desire for him, but not as strong as the thing that we call love. Well, that’s what I thought. I recall a conversation we had, a little after we became a couple. We were talking about where our relationship was heading, you see there’s an array of factors that’s affecting our relationship and we had a few glitches to iron out. Four hours on the phone with him, then there it was, the realization that I’m way passed the stage of just liking him, falling for him, being in love with him. I LOVE HIM. And to tell you honestly being in love with him is ecstatic, loving him is heavenly. If I tell you about every smile and frown we had along the way, it would take more than just a piece of paper and a pen. So I’ll share with you some experiences that made me fall in love with him over and over again.

The first time I ever saw a tear fall from his eyes happened when we were in Cebu, May 2008. We were having a casual talk over dinner, the moon was coming out at that time, I recall telling him how things that are happening to us seem like the ones ion the movies, the difference is that, it was actually happening to us.When I glanced at him, I knew that I’m lost in his eyes. September 11 of that same year he surprised me and caught me unaware. I was coming out of the shower that morning, he was standing beside our bed holding up his hand, he had 19 match sticks squeezed between his fingers, he lit them up and told me to make a wish. That simple gesture became the cherry on top of the surprises he gave me the night before. He did a lot of things that made me love him more. Surprise road trips, stolen kisses while we’re in the car, actually stolen kisses here and there, throwing me compliments out of the blue and even simply waking up beside him. But it wasn’t  all ice cream and cake in our relationship and to be fair I’ll tell you a bit about the storms we’ve been through and how at the darkest hour I still managed to fall in love with him again. Like any other couple we had fights. There are times that I really couldn’t stand him and he got into my nerves so bad that I never want to talk to him again but when he flashes me with a warm smile all the anger goes away. I can’t really stay mad at him, I would always find it in me to make amends. There was a time we were in a fight, we were exchanging hurtful words, then we fell asleep, side by side. When we woke up it seemed like we never really fought. Apart from the fights we had, our distance from each other can quite be a challenge. He is staying in Manila , we see each other for a couple of days every month, imagine traveling from Baguio to Manila or the other way around. Exhaustion for both of us and our resources, but it was so rewarding. You see being in a long distance relationship is not easy, but we didn’t make it hard. Which takes us both, balanced in the core of the thing that we call love.

Love, surely is a complicated word. Understanding it is relative. And one of the important things in life is learning how to give it out and let it come in. Once you have it let the fire burning. Have that warm steady glow and some sparks every now and then. Just like when i Read this to my partner, it gave us a spark that made us sweetly longing for each other.