Unrequited Love, Closeted Love, and Everything else in Between

Perhaps one of the most curious and human things in this world is our shared capacity to love. Regardless of our racial and socioeconomic differences, our need to love and be loved is something that we all share. In this article, I would like to muse on why people are so obsessed with the idea of the L-word. Rather, on the idea of being “loved back”. From unrequited love to closeted relationships, this article tackles different forms of love.

Unrequited Love

If you ask me what word I hate most in the entire English dictionary, it would most definitely be “unrequited”. The word just sounds so final, so dismissive, so uncaring. As someone who has very limited experience on the matter, there is only one thing that I am sure of, and this is that unrequited love hurts. It seems to tell us that no matter how good and pure our emotions for another may be, they still won’t reciprocate our feelings.

Closeted Love

They said that love can be found everywhere, and for some of us, it can even be found in closets. Like unrequited love, closeted love has multiple meanings. It could be the kind of love a closeted person feels for a friend, someone they admire and pine for from afar because that person does not know their true identity. For me, love should never be forced into a closet, a place so dark and claustrophobic. The closet is no place for love. The saddest thing is that no matter how “woke” our generation may be, there are still places in this world where non-gender-conforming love and relationships are not given safe spaces.

Everything Else in Between

When we talk about love, it’s not always about romantic partners. It could also be the love that we feel for our families. The love for the deities we choose to believe in. Our love for art, like music, words, or even film.

The real question is whether or not other people are required to love us back just because we loved them first. I agree that unrequited love is painful. However, I also think that the subject of our admiration is not required to love us back. Love should be so freeing, undemanding, and pure that the mere act of “loving” even with no promise of anything in return should make us happy.

Precious Paronable

Precious' only desire for the future is to be more human. The world we live in has shackled us in the limitations of practicality that we are taught that to be human is to be weak. She wants to change that narrative and attempt to prove that the best way to progress and equality is by amplifying our humanity. Believe it or not- she absurdly believes that this could be done through writing. On a more formal and boring note she has a journalism degree with plans to pursue legal studies in the future.