Trust me, it's okay to be clingy and intense.

Now that I’m done with graduate school, I realized I now have the luxury of time to meet people and date. Dating someone new is especially thrilling: the blindingly bright future, the peculiarly electrifying uncertainty, the obnoxiously cute attachment. Don’t we all just love how relationships typically begin?

As you get to know each other better, you focus your attention on this new person. You slowly (and unknowingly) tear down the sturdy wall you built—the same wall you intended to safeguard your frailties. While this can be magical, razing this wall to the ground can be a little too scary. Exposing yourself to unpredictability can either result to sheer bliss or irreparable mayhem. Surely rattling but worth it.

Wherever my dating life leads me, I usually just try to enjoy the process and bask in the moment. In the course of time, and with the help of my prying friends, I think I’ve already figured out what works for me when I involve myself with someone. Is it being too clingy (like how I am to my date)? Is it the intensity? Case by case, but you bet.

Unfortunately for me (us?), dating is bound by etiquette—a subjective, arbitrary list of dos and don’ts. To illustrate, sex after the first date. If two people truly hit it off after a fancy dinner, sex can be the perfect night cap. But some may label this as absurd and will easily cast aspersions on either or both parties. The relativity of how things can be construed is very confusing. Are we here to subscribe to vague conventions? Or are we all about pleasuring ourselves in ways not-so normative?  

Assuming there’s a follow through. Communication is constant. The effort is there as well. You inadvertently show deep desire and all of a sudden, you feel like you’re intensely hooked on this stranger. Interpreted as weakness, clinginess picks up its age-old reputation of a baleful manifestation of a failed relationship. We tend to paint a gloomy picture when talking about overeager love—or whatever it is. This, for most parts, simply isn’t fair. A relationship’s success should not be pinned on one’s decision to take the fast lane instead of taking it step-by-step. For me, it’s all about the varying degrees of attachment each one of us is sensitive to. One’s collective dating pattern may be a good basis in determining whether or not hyperintimacy at the onset will result to something favorable. This, however, is not foolproof.

I’m clingy. I'm intense. Marupok as hell. And I don’t think I should apologize for being so. It is not necessarily a bad thing. I believe being clingy and intense’s about being authentic. It’s about showing what you truly feel. It is about giving your all amid the risks. In fact, I can imagine my most amazing relationship right now, and that is with someone as clingy and intense as (I think) I am.

So when does an amazing relationship happen? It happens when the both of you breezily delete dating and hookup apps the moment you imagine having a great future together. It happens when the both of you send clear signals that you wanna date and get to know each other better without intentions of just messing around. It happens when the both of you trumpet each other to family and friends because, guess what, you both want your circles overlapped. It happens when the both of you treat responses to text messages as urgent because that’s just how excited you are to share your days' stories. It happens when the both of you yearn to spend quality time with each other despite hectic schedules. Ultimately, an amazing relationship happens when the both of you do not care about looking foolish in front of each other because you both know what genuine connection can do to you.

I don’t really mind being clingy and intense—if that means being true to myself and expressing what my heart feels. I figured a rapt and positive appreciation of such clinginess and intensity can be the right context for something propitious. 

So, hey, you. Come. Let’s be clingy and intense with each other. Regardless of where this will lead us to.

[Image from: Very Well Family]

Not quite there yet. But trying.

I have always been obsessed with the concept of love and how it brings joy to everyone who experiences it—not because of its magic but mostly because of how it practically helps you survive your day-to-day struggles cheerily. I have always believed that love is so powerful that however much you were hurt before, real love can trump this negative feeling. I’ve always shooed away cynical people whenever they question the existence of true love and insist it just wrecks the lives of people. Turns out, my thoughts about true love are so pure, almost to a point of being beguiled by my own musings. Love, in every beginning, should be great, one that uplifts the spirit. It should smell like the aroma of freshly lit candles straight out of the grocery bag. It should feel like a warm shower right before retiring on a chilly night. It should look like stars twinkling in the dark blue sky after a day of heavy downpour. It should sound like soft whispers of cicadas, which will most likely put you to sleep amid the exasperating noise. It should taste like a newly popped bottle of Malbec—crisp and lush. But why does it hurt? If love is such a wonderful thing, why does it always come with pain? People tend to drown themselves in the idea of being in love. There’s nothing wrong about it. But they should be reminded that love is not about nights when you cry yourself to sleep. It’s not about incessant drinking to a point of bleeding your gut. It shouldn’t be about random crazy nights of sitting on pavements wishing you’d see them by their doorstep. It is definitely not about spending $1300 on the most expensive bottle of wine just so you can make yourself feel good. It’s also not about begging for affection and sex just so you can be assured that something’s going on between you. Love and relationships sometimes go hand in hand. We all want that love to flourish into something transcendental. We all want to be in a relationship that’s real and truly deserving of our time and effort. All of these, we express in a seemingly haphazard and hasty manner. But what’s more agonizing is how we end up seeing ourselves in compromising situations. We compromise our beliefs. We compromise our standards. More so, we compromise our self-worth. We swing from tree to tree just to make an innocuous connection work. We climb mountains only to find out no one is there to face us. Everything becomes a vicious cycle. Suddenly, the magical feeling is fading. Until one day, you realize that what you thought was cunning is slowly transforming into a black hole that sucks all your energy from within. And yet, you continue to cling onto that one possibility. You still hope that if you just give it your all, something good might happen, borne out of a fairytale mindset likely coupled with unimaginable pain. You just want to be free from this senseless captivity. But you also fear that liberty is not the answer. On and off. You make decisions without thinking. But the fear of not being able to love someone as much is just creeping in. You are afraid to lose that special someone who isn’t even sure of things. You are afraid. And you realize.. That’s all it is. You will always be scared. You will always be scared of things that are uncertain. You will always be afraid of something you don’t deserve. The craziest part of being in love is realizing that after going through all this grueling pain, you still end up thanking God for all the wonderful moments you have shared with that one person. You still silently wish that sooner or later, your stars will align. You secretly hope and pray that one day, the person who gave you immense suffering will be the same person who you’d celebrate your triumphs with. You intimately imagine how beautiful a life both of you can have together. All these wishful thoughts, wet pillows, and soft wails. What a way to end each and every day. I guess, that’s the beauty of love after all—learning to embrace the pain of letting go while continuing to live in a world of fantasy and make-believe. Excruciatingly beautiful. I do not despise myself for having these celestial ideas of how true love should be characterized. Perhaps, what I believed in still stands. Only that, I am yet to meet that one person who will be a testament to how all these otherworldly concepts can be attributed to love.

[Cover photo by https://unsplash.com/@larm]

[Originally posted on Facebook]