Glow in the dark

Why is it easier to see in the dark than it is in the light? And no, that wasn't a typo.

It's a peculiar kind of funny how we cherish life most after someone close to us has passed away, how we most feel the urge to help strangers only after disaster strikes - and how easy it is to merge back into the fast lane. Why are the best of goods propelled by the worst of bads?

Clicking back at my posts over the past three years, pointing out the failures of my past relationships was almost as reflexive as the act of blinking itself. After three years, I got pretty good at it. I was seeing in the dark for so long that it became natural.

They say that the secret to a lasting relationship is not falling in love forever once, but of falling in love many times, and always with the same person.

The first time I thought I might be in love with my boyfriend, he was hugging me tight on a crowded platform, playing with my hair.

The first time I knew I loved my boyfriend we were playing Time Crisis. It was his turn, but I refused to give him the gun. After some contestation he managed to wring it out of my hands. Like a life or death struggle he stood up defiantly and started shooting at me, point blank, with in unloaded toy gun. In any other context, I swear this scene would have looked like something out of Mission Impossible.

The first time I told him I loved him we were lying down. For practice, I mouthed the words against his lips. Usually we did this as a guessing game. But this time round, something else was on his mind. 'Why don't you love me?' he asked. We had already been together for over a year. 'I've already told you I love you, you just didn't hear me'.

To break the barriers you have spent so long and tried so hard to keep up - exposing the parts of you that would make Hitler look like a saint, and the parts of you that would have you martyred, if people only knew - and to be loved amidst such contradictions is almost as other worldly as a mother's unconditional love for her child. Yet, for someone who was once a complete stranger, to even come close, is an amazing feeling to be had.

But the most important thing I've learnt is that love, for the sake of loving, does exist, if you only let it.