What I know of love

Like a child, love tends to hide in places where it is easily seen. It hides in plain sight and is visible only to those not afflicted by it.

Since a fragile age, I have had fleeting glances of love. And more often that not I have seen it lurking in places where it has no business, like a monster hoping to be wanted.

But most of all, I have seen it on the worst days of my life, ones I would never like to have back. And perhaps, that is the landmark of love. It arrives when all else leaves and when all else fails.

When all else shatters, it becomes a floor past which there is no falling.

It is there when the night gets too dark, when the shutters of life come all the way down and when there's little to look forward to.

And then, It is enough.

Although, I have always been told, love is never enough. It is never enough.

Yet, it was enough when my mother fell chronically ill and the reports announced it on an unexpected day. She picked me up from school with a saddened look pasted on her face, the news still a dream-like reality in the back of our lives. The days that followed were a blur, but all I remember is that love was enough.

It was enough when she threw the medicines away and my father picked them up for the third time in a row. And it was enough when he awoke early in the morning after sleepless nights to make sure she had breakfast and slept extremely soundly afterwards.

It was enough on nights she shed tears about death lurking nearby, and he consoled her for hours to come. It was always enough. And when the illness buried itself in the ground from the four walls of our home, it hid again like a kid, only to appear as a silent guest in hidden moments.

It was enough when she spent hours in the kitchen preparing what was his favourite meal. And it was enough when he pretended that the salt wasn't too much and the edges of the cake weren't burnt.

It was so enough.

So, I would like to think of it as a superhero, one that we have pictured wrongly.

It is not blood red roses, dripping red hearts and a walk in the park with a late night breeze or a diamond ring. Instead, it is the holding of someone's hand when they think they've lost the ability to hold onto anything. It is sitting by the bedside and watching your dear one die because the thought of leaving them alone feels more painful.

It is holding someone else's pain dear to you and being okay with it as it pierces your heart.

What I know of love is a cluster of not so lovable moments turned bearable. And I hope ever so desperately that this is exactly what it is.