I will not give up on love

I WILL not give up on love.

Oh, no! I will not give up on love.

I maybe old, I may be bruised and scarred, but I will not give up on love.

***

I will not stop loving men and boys who are unavailable to me.

I will not stop loving men and beautiful gay men who love me some, and are gone.

I will not stop loving the idea that one day soon, we will meet, and you will fall in love with me.

***

It’s too easy to give up.

It’s too easy to give up on you even before we could meet.

It’s too easy to let you go, and set you free so that you will find someone less romantic than I.

It’s too easy to surrender you to the world.

***

But love (or life) is never meant to be easy.

The pandemic has taught us that.

It’s always easier to give up, and die.

But we always try harder to survive.  

***

And I will survive.

To find you, to love you, to make you happy.

To give your life meaning and happiness.

I will be your angel, your savior, your champion, your knight in shining armor.

***

I’ve been through a lot in this life.

Some tragedies, and a lot more happy occurrences, joyful celebrations.

I have developed an eye for the big picture, for the things that matter.

I am not easily defeated.

***

I’ve have seen the world, the best and worst of people.

I have prayed, felt, and thought about all that I have seen, and I still think it is worth it to love, and to keep on loving. 

***

I’ve seen places that I’ve never wanted to live in, but people still live there.

I’ve seen relationships that I’ve never wanted to be in, but people still stay there.

Who is to say what love is to many other people?

***

What I want about love is how it makes us feel alive.

The pain, the tears, the tragedies, the joys, and desires.

The lust, the want, the need to touch, and be touched.

The longing, the obsession, the strong desire to possess.

And to possess! Oh, to possess the body, the soul, the love, the spirit, the beauty of another.

***

I am sad about how love has been commodified in our times.

How it is given a price tag, how some people can only have it if the price is right.

That is nothing new in the history of the world though.

***

In fact, that’s often how love was.

Only that we are more drawn to the more heroic stories of Romeo and Juliet, or the artists and their muses and/or prostitutes.

***

I want those kind of love.

Love that doesn’t settle.

Love that fights with madness, with passion, with ardor.

I want a love that risks everything. 

That gambles the high stakes.

***

We will all die.

Pandemic, wars, climate change, cancer and illness, whatever.

We will all die, together, or one after another.

And when we are ashes into ashes, what will remain is how we have loved.

***

It is immaterial whether we are loved back or not.

Whether we got what we wanted or not.

Whether we possessed what we desired, or we died desiring.

The main thing, if not the only thing, is how we died loving.

How in the state of love we were when we died.

***

If we died having given up, we have died in spirit much sooner.

If we died without so much love in our heart, of what use are a few more hours, days, years?

But if with our last dying breath we are still able to confess the words “I love you”, then we have lived.

We have truly lived!

***

Happy Valentine’s, my dear readers.

I’m still doing my great tour of Europe despite this pandemic.

I wrote this piece on the night train to Romania from Poland, by way of Hungary. 

The views outside the train are a varied lot—mountains and plains still covered by patches of melting snow, some depressing rural communities like our Philippine slums, some abandoned buildings, even abandoned train stations.

But such is the world.

Still, all this makes me think: Only love can keep people alive in places like these!/PN