To love at all.

Love isn't perfect. It isn't a fairytale or a scrapbook and it doesn't come easy.

Love is overcoming obstacles, facing challenges, fighting to be together,

holding on and never letting go. It is a short word, easy to spell, difficult to define, and 

impossible to live without. Love is work, but most of all, love is realizing 

that every hour, every minute, every second of it was worth it because you did it together.

-Tumblr

Love and life -- they both go together. Love makes life more meaningful, life makes it existentially possible for love to happen. Both are two beautiful things. With that, I will write about my lover, and my bestfriend.

Jon Mark and I initially knew each other back when I was in elementary and he was in high school. We have a three-year gap, just so you know. We weren't really friends, just a mere acquaintance. Of course we had different worlds back then, but I always admired him every time he sang in our church or during school activities. He was my little secret crush. I remember casually bringing him up during family conversations when I was much, much younger. Crush-crush lang, nothing serious back then. Years passed -- I went back to Davao because we had to transfer back-and-forth from Cebu every now and then so naturally, thoughts about my little crush faded away.

He was always known to his friends and my old schoolmates as playboy/chickboy/just someone who really didn't commit to anything or anyone. I vividly remember the day he called me one day when I was just a highschool senior. I didn't know who was calling... I asked, and he said that it was "Jon Mark". I knew it was him! Well duh, primarily because I was also in a relationship back then, I didn't give any care about his out-of-the-blue phone call.

When I got back to Cebu, my tita's cousin, my churchmate, Val formally introduced Jon Mark to me because they were close friends. I can recall our very first kind-of-awkward date. One time, I overheard Jon Mark telling someone that what struck him the most about me was that on our first date, I kept on talking and talking, parang nakwento ko na raw whole life ko. Well. Sometimes I can't help it.

Our relationship didn't start out as the ideal boy meets girl, they become friends, they fall in love, and they live happily ever after. In truth, our relationship was very hard to define considering the context of circumstances that surrounded us at that time. There was a lot of drama going on between both of us and some other people. I'm just glad that phase is over. Thinking about it, I now have actually hated thinking about the first few months of a relationship. Others have it as their honeymoon phase. Ours was different. I don't really need to tell you about every detail, but it was just that. Plain and simple.

From that phase, our relationship grew as each of us grew as persons. Every time I look back I can really readily compare major improvements in our own separate lives as individuals and as a couple. It's very beautiful that we have become so comfortable to each other, but not to the point that everything has become a routine. A lot of relationships fall into that trap. I love how he is willing to work out any entanglements we go through. I have come to consider him as my best friend. Why? I can tell him anything, and he won't judge me. He's one of the persons I can truly be myself with. I became more mature as a person because he didn't hinder me from my dreams nor does he discount me as a person. What makes being with him worthwhile is that I am with somebody who genuinely loves and cares. 

I cannot say at all that our love is perfect. It is absolutely not! Each of us have our own distinct flaws and weaknesses. However, we are always ALWAYS learning to overlook that and just focus on the important things. Every day, it is an ongoing process of learning, adjusting, compromising. I've learned that relationships do take a lot of work. It's true that love is a risk. People will always talk about you. They can always find flaws in your relationship. A lot of people can bring you down. You can be hurt. You can get your heart broken. But, love will always be worth the risk. If I didn't, I wouldn't have come across something beautiful as this. As C.S. Lewis puts it, "To love at all is to be vulnerable."