To Love Her, in October and Even After

It’s that time of the year again, and you’re probably hearing it everywhere: “You look so pretty, and I love this view, we fell in love in October.”

On Instagram stories and TikTok feeds, October becomes a month for randomly posting memories, stolen glances, dates, and the girls who made them worth remembering. For many women loving women (WLW), Girl in Red’s familiar lyrics have become a soundtrack for putting love into words—or sometimes, simply putting it on display.

But behind the song that has become an October staple is a love story of its own.

Marie Ulven Ringheim, better known by her stage name Girl in Red, wrote “we fell in love in october” in 2015 about her first relationship with a girl. At that time, she had recently broken up with a boyfriend and was in a relationship with a woman she described as her first “girl love.” Ulven said that the song was her way of declaring her love for the girl after struggling for a long time to accept it, turning the chorus into an unabashed claim: “my girl.”

The song was eventually released in 2018, but its story did not stay with Ulven alone. It found its way into the lives of listeners who began using it to soundtrack their own relationships, particularly among young queer women. The song's popularity has since grown into a recurring October tradition online, where couples post their girlfriends alongside its lyrics and melodies. 

However, the feeling behind those posts does not always belong to couples who are still together. For some, it is a memory of being loved; for others, a reminder of someone they lost, a relationship that never happened, or a kind of love they are still waiting to find.

Kirby España, a 19-year-old Communication student at the University of Santo Tomas (UST), shared her thoughts with The Communicator about how “we fell in love in october" resonates not with a love story that lasted, but with one she is still learning how to leave behind.

To Be With Her is Enough

Before it became a story about losing someone, Kirby's relationship was filled with small things that made the little time they had together feel enough.

The girl she was seeing was an artist, and Kirby often became her muse. She would turn Kirby into a subject for her artworks, making her part of the art she created. The exchange went both ways: whenever Kirby wrote literary pieces, they were often about her.

She even began writing more in Filipino after once telling the girl that she wanted to try using her mother tongue more often, despite being unsure about her grammar. What stayed with Kirby was the assurance that she would be accepted regardless.

Their relationship existed quietly too. Both of them were still hiding in the closet with their families, and their meetings were often limited to an hour or two at UST.

Still, for Kirby, those hours were enough.

“Parang sulit na sulit siya basta kasama ko siya,” she said.

At the time, being with her made everything feel like it would eventually be alright—even with the uncertainty surrounding them.

For Kirby, being loved by another woman also meant an acceptance that did not always need an explanation. When asked what had stayed with her most about being loved by another woman, she said: “Walang super logical explanation for it. They’re just willing to do things for you just because they love you.” 

But to her, loving someone was never supposed to mean staying only through the easy parts.

“Loving her” meant persevering with her, she said, because love does not suddenly become simple once two people decide to be together. It means being willing to be inconvenienced and staying through difficult moments.

For a while, Kirby believed that was what they could do for each other.

Until she decided they couldn't.

The Love that Stayed a Maybe

But loving someone through difficult moments did not always mean holding on. Because for Kirby, there came a point when staying no longer felt like perseverance, but a choice that could hurt them both.

When she eventually chose to end what they had, she tried to hold herself together. She told herself she was doing the right thing. If they continued, she believed, they would only hurt each other more in the long run.

“I was trying to be the bigger person and be firm sa decision ko, even if it was hurting me too,” she recalled.

Then came the silence, because the next day, there were no more messages from the person she had grown used to having around. Kirby had blocked her on social media and tried to numb the pain by convincing herself that the decision had been necessary.

It was only months later that she began to understand what she had actually lost.

“Whatever we had was special to me, and it felt like there was something missing in my life,” she lamented.

There was no going back to chase it though. By then, too much time had passed. As for her, she would still make the same decision if she were given the chance to return to that moment.

She believed that staying any longer could have made their relationship toxic and unhealthy for both of them. The heartbreak, then, did not come from believing that she had made the wrong choice; it came from realizing how much the right choice could still hurt.

“Heartbreak” is the word she uses for the experience now. 

Kirby is still in the process of moving on while accepting how important the relationship had become to her. 

But alongside the heartbreak is something else: hope.

Not necessarily hope of getting back together, but hope that the experience itself meant something beyond the pain. It taught her something about losing someone she had become accustomed to having in her life—and about learning how to live without them.

That is also where music can become complicated.

For Kirby, a song associated with someone who is no longer around can become a person’s own ghost.

A song may eventually take on a new meaning, she said, but there are times when people remain haunted by songs they once listened to because of an ex-lover.

The song remains. The person does not. Because the memory attached to it stays longer than either expected.

Maybe One Day, She Will Be Mine

For some, “we fell in love in october” is a celebration of something they have. For others, it can sound like something they once had.

Recalling it, she stated that seeing other WLW couples post their relationships can sometimes bring her back to her own. She does not resent the happiness she sees on screen. More often, she wishes those couples well. But there are moments when the posts bring back the memory of what she once had—and the inevitable “what ifs” that follow. She remembers being that happy with someone too.

“Sometimes it does,” Kirby reiterated of comparing her experience with the couples she sees online. “I end up getting a bittersweet feeling because I was once that happy with someone else.”

Still, she hopes those couples won’t end up the way they did.

The kind of love she hopes to find in the future is different from the one she had before: one she can fully commit to without worrying about whether her parents will find out or whether the relationship might affect her career.

For Kirby, being loved by a woman is itself a privilege.

“I think it’s the greatest honor I can get,” she said, “because being loved also means having trust placed in you.”

That desire for a love she can openly commit to also challenges one of the assumptions often made about WLW relationships: that they should be easier because both people are women. 

Kirby disagrees. “It’s not easier,” she asserted.

Being two women does not make a relationship immune to the same difficulties that can affect any other relationship, from financial and academic pressures to cheating and unhealthy behavior.

Understanding one another does not mean understanding everything. Love, regardless of who is in between, still asks people to navigate the complicated parts of being together.

Beyond the Song

Maybe that is why the song continues to resonate beyond the October posts.

Girl in Red originally wrote “we fell in love in october” as a declaration of love—a moment when she could finally claim the girl she loved after struggling to accept that affection herself.

Years later, other women have given the song their own meanings.

It can be a memory of a relationship, the ache of an almost-relationship, the quiet grief of an ending, or the hope of eventually finding someone with whom love does not have to remain hidden.

Kirby’s own story no longer revolves around finding her way back to the girl she lost. Instead, it is about learning how to live without her and understanding what the experience left behind.

Kirby's interpretation in the song is not only about finding someone. Her story is about what happens after love has already been found, felt, and lost.

“I think my story is about learning how to live without someone and learning from my past mistakes,” she reflected. 

For one girl, October may mean finally falling in love. For another, it may mean remembering the girl she almost had. And for someone else, it may simply be the month she hopes that someday, the words will belong to her.

Article: Selene Ashlee Vitor

Graphics: Justine Ceniza