By: Claudia Ly

Love is red. 

Love is pink. 

That’s what Valentine’s day taught her. 

Crushes, dating, falling in love, getting married, and happily ever after. That’s what she learned from books and thought was part of life. She thought she knew everything there was about love. She grew up thinking marriage meant “til death do us part” because that’s what they vowed, right? Wrong. Even when people make promises, they can still break them. 

She thought she was living the storybook life: a loving family under one roof living happily as could be; great friends; and loving school. Turns out, this story had more conflicts than she had anticipated. Shouts during soccer and football games turned into shouts about money and working overtime. Soon, the Febreezed air became poisoned with the stench of alcohol and cigarettes. Her storybook life had turned sour. Her family wasn’t perfect like she thought. Hearing her mother and father fight became a regular occurrence as her and her sister huddled in her bed, waiting for it to be over. With every shout, she hugged her sister tighter, wishing that everything was just a dream. Her mother would come in afterwards, eyes puffy and red, with her arms open whispering that everything was okay and that he promised he still loved us. The excuse was the same every time. They just fought about something stupid. She was only 7 years old, but could tell it was deeper than that. 

This routine continued for years, constantly being bombarded with questions from her mother in the car, asking who she wanted to live with if they got divorced. This always resulted in tears before walking into her class. She was just a little girl who had hope; who wanted love in her life; to see her family happy. Once her idol, her father slowly turned into her enemy. After they left him, she struggled with feeling abandoned. Her heart held a grudge against him because he loved her so much as a kid. But now? She felt invisible in his eyes. 

Her perception of love was distorted at age 7. What’s love without fights? This is love, right? What was love anyways and why did she want to feel it so badly? At 16, she had a crush on a friend who loved hanging out and confiding in her but didn’t like her enough to be anything more than friends. And that was fine. If friendship was all he gave, she'd take that. At 17, he decided she wasn’t worth the effort of keeping in touch with even though he promised. Desperate to feel love reciprocated, she gave too much of it out. She cared too much about her friends only to get back nothing. She was the one everyone relied on but she couldn’t rely on anyone. But that’s ok because they were her friends. They said they loved her. But it was never the same amount. She began to close herself off and stopped chasing the friends who clearly wanted nothing to do with her. This made her less affectionate and less trusting of people. She was in pain and suffering. Is this what love was?

Her first boyfriend was someone who she thought understood her. He was caring and was willing to be patient because she told him it was difficult for her to show affection to people. He was okay with it and reassured her of her feelings. That was the first time she felt like someone truly cared about her. She thought, ‘It’s finally my turn.’ As she was showered with what she thought was love, she found a bomb. And amongst the ashes, his true colors began to show. The lies, manipulation, and deceit that awaited her greeted her with their cold, open arms. ‘Talking would work this out,’ she thought. He isn’t the person to do this. Talking didn’t work. He gaslit her into thinking she was overreacting. She was dramatic. It was her fault. ‘Do you not trust me? How could you think that?’ he told her. He told her that he wanted to work on himself but still be with her, but she didn’t see anything good coming from that so, she left while she could. But seeing him quickly move on broke her.

Crying, she wondered if she should have taken him back, knowing that she’d trap herself in an endless cycle of manipulation and lies. She was so desperate to hang on to the someone that made her feel like she was actually loved that she was willing to compromise her own morals and values in order to feel something. For once in her life, she just wanted what everyone else had. She wanted to fall in love with someone and have a person who cared about her as much as she cared about them. Was she really worth loving? Did she ask for too much in this relationship that she wasn’t worth dealing with anymore? She wiped her tears and emotionally began to invalidate herself. It was for the better. He was an asshole. He shouldn’t have done that. You deserve better. If you stayed it would have gotten worse. Shutting her emotions off, she spiraled into the worst she’s ever felt. 

Dealing with emotions was never her strong suit, but after this, she was lost. As she got older, love let her down more and more. She didn’t know what to do… College filled her mind and suddenly her schedule filled up more and more with assignments and work that made her so busy that she didn’t have time to feel. Anything to help her ignore it. Anything to forget. The routine of detriment went on for the entirety of the school year. But one day after rotting in bed, she had the realization that this was going nowhere. She wasn’t going to move forward in life with the path she was on. Her heart and mind might have been broken, but she didn’t want to be fragile. This wasn’t going to define who she was. She wouldn’t let it. 

It was never her fault. She had no control of the way people acted nor was she responsible for helping them change who they were when they never had that intention. No more would she be taking the blame for people because she felt that their actions hurt her. 

Love is subjective. 

There’s no formula for love nor is there a right answer. Everyone is going to feel and present love in different ways. She’s still figuring out what love is and who she feels that with. Slowly, but surely, she begins to feel again, patching up the cracks left across her heart and mind, and finding the simple joys in life. Falling in love is a part of life, but it doesn’t have to be with someone. It could be with your work, hobbies, places, and most importantly, yourself. 

She finds that love isn’t red or pink. There’s green mixed in.

And finally, she sees…love is gray. 

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