dolorous interludes.

Love you like you do (or she did).

My father never knew how to love me the way I wanted him to.
And I in turn, never quite knew how to articulate how I wanted him to love me.

By fourteen, I dated my first boyfriend, and from him I was loved the way I thought I wanted to be loved- incessant ‘I love you’s, bouquets of flowers, millions of handwritten cards and letters, and thrillions of seconds worth of constant affection in a multitude of ways.

Even at eighteen, I doubted my dad’s love. One day, in the middle of several exchanges of throes of anger between him and I, I openly asserted that he didn’t.

Until he cried.

And all traces of doubt dispersed.

I began to open my heart to a new kind of love, or rather, something that I’ve always recognised but refused to accept as love because the manner in which I desired love was often myopic, perhaps even narrow minded.

I never truly understood what someone meant by the aphorism “people love in different ways” until I chose to open my eyes to the little things that often went unnoticed (because precedent dictated or defined it otherwise), or taken for granted.

Today, my dad tries, rather awkwardly, when he texts an “I love you” in the middle of the day, or a “come back soon I miss you” when I’m overseas. These occasions are rare, but I keep those messages in my inbox dearly.

And today, I see his love in a very different light. He still doesn’t display much physical affection, neither has he ever written me a birthday card or articulated love the way we often expect it to be. But, I feel it when he goes out of his way to buy me my favourite cheng teng from Newton hawker centre; I feel it when he gives me space on weekends to get about my obligations or appointments even though I know he’d rather have me spend the weekend with the family; I feel it when he sets aside time to have lunch with only me without the rest of the family; I feel it when he says absolutely nothing at all but silently watches tennis with me when the season comes around.

From time to time, we meet someone we fancy but can’t or don’t know how to love us the way we desire it so, but that doesn’t necessarily translate itself to love’s absence. If only we opened our hearts a little more, thought less about our own expectations, and appreciate what we’ve always had instead of choosing only to seek what we lack (by our parameters).

posted by voyeur @ 8/13/2005 01:12:00 AM