Photography by Jerferson Permejo

I am a realist at best, but truthfully I am a closet-romantic at heart. I go through romance novels faster than an addict goes through his own crack stash (my e-reader has over five hundred e-books under the ‘already read’ pile, my god).

I eat up rom-coms like a starving woman consuming her last meal, and do so only in the company of my own self, freely weeping either in sheer delight for a happy ending or utter heartbreak for a sad one.

In a world where the existence of ‘true love’ is highly doubted, I put on a front as if I do not give a damn whether or not it does, but desperately cling to the hope that it could be.

I have always wondered what it would be like to love. And I don’t mean the tepid, lukewarm kind of love I normally see in couples nowadays – the kind of love whose embers used to burn bright in the beginning but were not stoked the same way as before, to the point that their intensity has waned to a degree of ‘there, but barely’. The kind of love wherein both partners are so used to each other, so co-dependent on each other, that despite their lack of love, still choose to be together because why ruin a perfectly good thing especially if there isn’t really a problem, right?

No, I want a love that, as cliché as it sounds, takes my breath away. A love that can turn my insides into pure mush. A love that is so deeply embedded in me, it resonates in my soul. A love that makes me look at that person and say to myself, “How the fuck did I even get this lucky?” I want a love that pushes me willingly to become a better version of myself, not just for me, but for that person, too. A love that can make my toes curl with absolute want but at the same time make my heart skip a beat with complete affection. I want a love that makes me feel alive and thankful for being so. I want a love where I can love someone. Freely.

Try as I might though, I haven’t. Found love, that is. It isn’t for a lack of trying, per se. More probably of reality knocking my head over and bursting my understandably too-way-in-the-clouds dream.

I search for love but ultimately all I find are dick pics, emotionally-unavailable men, my self-worth questioned, illicit propositions spanning the durations of one night or more, first-date horror stories, and my hopes frayed to the point that I worry they may snap someday. That they may snap before I even meet the guy of my dreams, and I would be so jaded I wouldn’t even be able to give him the chance to prove love’s existence to me otherwise.

Still, seeing as I am but a few notches from turning into a cynic just yet, I still nurture these hopes. Because I know with absolute certainty that he is out there, and that fate will someday cross our paths soon.

Wherever you are, I hope I find you. I hope that by the time you come into my life I wouldn’t be stupid enough to know a good thing when I see it. That you come into my life before my fraying hopes completely snap, and I fuck myself over for eternity, not knowing for the life of me that you were going to be the best blessing to ever grace my life.

I hope you come into my life like a hurricane of epic proportions and knock me off my ass. I hope that you make me feel more alive than I have ever felt in my entire lifetime. And more importantly, I hope I can love you with the same intensity as I want you to love me and be the person who deserves to be the one to love you however way I would want it, whether it’s slow and languid or hard and fast – as long as you know it’s love and that mine would only ever be yours to have up until I breathe my last.
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Reader Submission by Lyra Lee

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