This is an ode to stories, the only way I’ve understood love

All I know about love is through stories.

I’ve only lived it vicariously through other people’s lens, be it fictional or not. When asked about teenage infatuation, I shrug and say, “I’ve never really had a crush.” In the case of interrogations about relationships, the same thoughts run through my head—I’m not one for it, I won’t be interested in one, I’m as aromantic as they come, if you insist on putting a label to it.

But I seem like a walking contradiction to what I love to consume: romance stories, and lots of them.

All I know about love is through copious amounts of young adult literature, which I still consume from time to time. A friend used to recommend Sarah Dessen’s books, whose whole shtick of young love and traumatic pasts still sits on my shelves. They’re formulaic, at best , but they goaded me to pile books upon books from her collection, until my Goodreads peers were exhausted themselves.

I’ve come to know that these stories are life elevated and not life itself, as they found their way to a world where love does conquer all.

I wrote several drafts of romance in books that have yet to see the light, stemming from the stories that have inspired me to create sparks of electricity between two, three made-up people. Never mind that I’ve never had that, let alone an all-encompassing heartbreak that poets speak of. Still, I kept writing, hoping to echo the same feelings I’ve gotten from books.

All I know about love is through the different pairings that have graced my screens, who have all been the center of a long, arduous fixation at one point. More often than not, they’re set in the backdrop of something bigger than themselves, although their love seems to outshine them all.

I fixate on those whose love is tested by colossal forces, seen by my string of star-crossed pairings and enemies on different sides of the war. Fandom culture likes to mark my taste as problematic, judging from the dubious dynamics of battling rivals they like to compare to real-world abuse. But I’ve come to know that these stories are life elevated and not life itself, as they found their way to a world where love does conquer all.

Because of their story, I learned that fate was a real thing.

All I know about love is through the story of how my parents met, one I’ve asked my father to share after a stroll on Session Road, where he and I had hot chocolate during the rare time I was awake for breakfast. (At one point, this story would have been adapted into a melodramatic Saturday night show, but that’s a tale for another day.)

It goes like this: My father, in his early 20s, departs Manila for Tacloban on a business trip as a newly-minted career guy. A storm halts his flight like fate, and his plane gets diverted to Cebu.

On the other side of the story is my mother, who’s working as a hotel concierge intern in a city where my father has never been. She’s the woman who caught his eye after a storm-ridden flight, not knowing that fate has pulled them into that same spot.

The box of letters

For their 40th wedding anniversary last year, my parents unearthed letters browning with age from a wooden box, an exchange of love notes across regions after that serendipitous meeting. They got married soon after that. I had told them their story reminded me of “The Notebook.”

Because of their story, I learned that fate was a real thing.

I once read that “shipping” is a sign of loneliness, fueled by a need to experience love and romance. But from what I’ve considered, consuming these stories never stirred up an untapped desire for me to find love myself. Even from a distance, love stories, by themselves, are already a wonder. Through them, I see the inner machinations of the world that led two strangers from distant points to meet. Through them—even the fictionalized, grand romances of our time—I see the little semblances of magic that the day-to-day really craves, but are too afraid to ask for.

All I know about love is through stories, and somehow, that’s fine by me.

Art by Yel Sayo