When you love someone, it is said that you love their strengths and their flaws - their plainness and their craziness, their celery-prisoned teeth and their monstrous blechs, their cocoon-shrivelled sleeping positions and their morning breath, their bad-made breakfasts and lunches and dinners. You love them for their delightful hype-filled moods and likewise you love them in their massive breakdowns, you love them (and look away from the speed meter) even when they're speeding on the highway and may end up killing you, you love them for the way ice cream stains the corners of their lips and you love them when they smear lipped-leftover ice-cream across your face, you love them even when they tell you in a thousand ways that you're imperfect and they mean it, you love them for the way their scent lingers somehow. Their fright for beetles adores you and you love the way you save them from fear, you love them for the way they let you protect them like they were exclusively yours infinitely, you love them more because you get scared that "goodbye" will be the next thing you say to one another, you love the way you reminisce about silly fights and you love the way you fight but know that you're madly in love. You love them for the way they leave cartoon post-its on your examination notes and you love re-looking at them. You love them although they've left you crying to sleep by yourself. You love them for the way they make you feel whenever you're both shopping for Christmas decorations and you love them for the way they pick the same pieces from the stores as you do. You love them even though they don't reply your messages, you realise you love them more whenever they do. You love the way you feel whenever you read past texts and feel fluttery all over again, you love to hate and hate to love the bittersweet tugging feeling at the heart everytime they're not there and you read these to sleep. You love attending Sunday masses with them and you love how proud you feel being next to them at church. You love beginning to love things you usually hated, because they change your perceptions and because their perceptions become yours. You love the way you love them, regardless of how trying circumstances and obstacles get. You love them, for who they exactly are although that's exactly the part that breaks your heart. You love them, knowing hurt will road your way eventually. You love them, knowing they are the ones who possess the ability to light a smile from your heart. So yes, it is said that if you love someone, you love with all overwhelming lack of care of what's going to end you up in in time. You love, unconditionally. You begin to live to love. Your heart no longer belongs to you and you know it at the back of any ABCs. You know you've loved, if it hurts; and if it hurts, you've loved.

These are risks that are eating inside me, but with every ounce of the being I am, I love you and I love you beyond all your shortcomings. You're not perfect, but neither am I, and that's probably how we fix each other. I am yours and you are mine.