"I LOVE ME" - Write your Love Story Entry

This would be my entry for @haneun's Write your love story Challenge. For more info go here.

The story I'm going to tell you is neither boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy meets boy nor girl meets girl. This is not that kind of love story. This of the story on how I learned to LOVE and ACCEPT myself for who I really am.

Who am I?

I often ask this question to myself. Who am I? I know I am someone who have a higher tendency of falling in love with someone from the same sex BUT I do not limit myself on loving someone base on their sexuality. I also fall in love with girls, it's just that I'm 80% more attracted to the same sex most of the time(Crazy right?) and I have high standards when it comes to girls(hahaha!!). My friends always tend to ask me if I'm gay or not, I always say, "I don't need labels". Well, I can't blame them, I'm a very jolly type of person, I'm the life of the party as what other have told me. So I tend to be loud most of the time. So yeah. That's me. :D

I'll be dividing the while story to 4 parts because it all happened on different "eras" during my college days
All mentioned names are not their real names just to protect their privacy

Part 1: The HeartBreak

I met Caesar during my first day in college. As what I've told you I'm a really friendly guy and I don't hide the fact that I sometimes like boys, so everybody knows. Even though he knew that, we became best of friends. We always did everything with each other. Didn't know much about love that time but I knew I had feelings for him. Though I knew that we won't have any chance because he was straight I still continued being best friends with him and just continually shunned that feeling at the back of my heart. I know everything there is to know about him, I also know his type of girl. I knew he was falling with one of our classmates, Laura. One day he asked me if I can be his wingman for Laura. And I did! I'm that stupid back then. I did that just because I know he would be happier that way. I didn't give any chance for myself to even cry about it. I said to myself "Who am I to cry? It's just my stupid feelings." I didn't care much about myself back then. I was always sad but I didn't show to people because they would know that I am hurting. I kept what I feel for a long time. This was the very first real heartbreak that ever happened to me.

FIRST LESSON: Never prioritize someone over yourself, Love yourself first before loving anybody else

Part 2: Learning to Let go

A year has passed since I fell for Caesar and I can say that I have moved on. I just focused on my studies, that's when I became close with Christa. Christa is one of my closest girl friend during those times. We both studied our hearts out. I always liked it when we have our group studies. Yep, she's a girl. This time around, I fell for a girl which I usually study with. I know, sorry, I'm a hopeless romantic. I actually tried courting her. Well, when I admitted I had feeling for her thats when our relationship as friends came south. I rarely see her after that even though I do give her these letters telling her how much I really like her. One day, I jokingly told her that I was over her and that it might have been just infatuation I'm feeling. I just didn't want our friendship to be in shatters just because of what I'm feeling. I have accepted the fact that I am just her Friend and nothing more.

SECOND LESSON: I've learned to let go of feelings I know will not be fruitful in the future.

Part 3: Acceptance

Didn't get to see Christa again after a long time because we had different classes. I became close to this one guy I am friend with ever since i started college. We applied to the same Academic Organization that why we became friends, his name is Vaughn. He became one of my greatest confidants, one of my bestest friends. I accidentally fell for him but at this point in time I already knew how my heart plays tricks on me so I learned to accept those feelings and learned that there is more to friendship than just falling in love with a person. I valued the weight of our friendship rather than the feelings I got for him. I knew he was important to me as a brother and I didn't want to lose that. I found one of my longest and strongest friendship in him together with his girlfriend and another one of our friends.

THIRD LESSON: as the quote by Revan Al-Asmari goes "Losing a friend is more painful that losing a romantic relationship."

Part 4: Long-Term Investment

Me, Vaughn and our group of friends meet regularly. I loved each and everyone of them as brothers and sisters. As I have mentioned from my previous story, they became one of my longest and strongest bonds in college. We're now on our 8th year of friendship.

In the present time, I've learned that investing is not always about money. Learning new skills and doing what you love most can also be one of the invesments one can get. Self-investment. Right now I'm on the process of learning new things. I've come back to taking photos which was one of my hobbies when I was in college.

I'm not really in a hurry to get into a relationship nowadays. I'm now just focusing on myself and how I can grow so that I can be a better version of myself.

FOURTH LESSON: Focus on yourself and be a better version of yourself.

I've learned so much in the past years and I know that learning is a never-ending process. I know that the "Carlo" now is different from the "Carlo" on the first part of this story. I have now accepted who I really am and I loved myself more because of that.

The story I have told you is neither boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy meets boy nor girl meets girl. This is not that kind of love story. This is the story on how I learned to LOVE and ACCEPT myself for who I really am.