Can't you say the L word?

For so many years, I had never found a word that would replace that one word that I have a hard time not really pronouncing but merely uttering. That one word which when I speak of entails a lot more than what it suppose to mean. The one word that for so many people can be easily said over and over again just like hello. But I know that some people are one with me when I say that it is hard to say, to utter, to mention, to talk about, to speak of.

I have grown from a family of “non-expressive’s,” one where things like the one I’m trying to talk about is hard to talk about. Just like apologies, submissions and everything in that line, and more.

Our family less than rarely, if not never, said a prayer before meals. But I don’t think it’s a big deal. We are grateful to God for whatever there is in the dining table that we are to share, we just don’t say it out loud. And for my personal opinion, that is better than merely saying the “prayer before meal” taught us in kindergarten. I have seen it, heard it, and experienced it many times before – sharing meals with those people who knows that prayer so well that it goes automatically flowing, like saying the longest word in the English language. It’s like they’ve connected each word in the prayer that it sounds like a new word longer than pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.

I don’t blame these people. Sometimes, the things that we were taught when we were little are the things we grow with, making it harder to let go of what we had once learned.

I once envied the kids who kiss their parents goodbye and tell them they love them. I wish it is as easy for me to do and say things like that to my own parents, because I really do. Of course, every child loves their parents. Some just won’t admit it, but if you dig really deep inside, they do. And I hope all parents know that.

But what are these lips made for if not to talk and kiss? It is not enough that they know that you love them. Sometimes, we have to constantly remind them and make them feel so.

The book says so....

If you think it’s tough now, wait until then. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can’t get any better, it will. But as long as you remember that he loves you and you love him – and both of you act that way – you’ll be just fine.
- At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks

I know, I’ll be just fine.

Does trust have to be earned? Or is it simply a matter of faith?

Who do I trust? Do I even trust anyone? What have they done to earn it?
Yes. I trust someone, someone that I love. And when you love someone, you’ll give them everything you have and can give… hugs and kisses, time and space, sweet words and bad words, night stories and nonsense stories, patience and impatience, understanding and misunderstanding, hopes and worries, everything including trust. I gave him these, and he gave me these.

If trust has to be earned, how do you earn it? I guess it is by doing something that would make you trustworthy, to the littlest things like keeping a secret to the biggest like taking good care of the most fragile thing in this world, a heart. If I tell you a secret then that means I already trust you because for now it’s uncertain that you would keep it. The same holds true with the heart. Only time would tell. But at first, it was simply a matter of faith. And through time, only one of two things will happen: you earn it or you lose it.

Time? There wasn't. Love? Overwhelming.

For years he’d needed to do something – anything – every waking moment. He couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time; there was always something to read or study, always something to write. Little by little, he’d realized he’d lost the ability to relax, and the result was a long period of his life in which months blurred together, with nothing to differentiate one year from the next.
- At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks

I am not complaining about the time lost for the two of us because he is busy working on things that are more important, like studying. Do I have the right to demand that one language of love? I guess so. But I don’t demand that. I want it to be given to me without me asking for it. I want it to be given to me without anyone telling him to do so. I want it to be given to be out of his own free will. I know he tries to do so. And the fact that he tries is enough for me. It’s not settling for anything less, it’s knowing when something is at its state of being “nothing less and nothing more” and living with it.