I was walking with –name-, then you-he saw us. I briefly said hello. But when I looked back, he was gone. Or was he that same guy only wearing a different shirt? I wasn’t surprised. Then a message.

Maybe, it’s not because of me.

“What am i supposed to do?”
My friend said, “You are not a tree.”
“What?”
“You are not a tree,” he repeated. “You are not rooted on the ground,” he said.
“So I can fly?” I asked.
“I didn’t say you’re a bird, i said you’re not a tree,” he said.
“Ahhh… you mean I can move on?”

Asking to take home that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,

May be asking for too much.  So I’ve come to a resolution, just

Have someone take my picture holding it.  [still deciding if I want

The leprechaun anywhere near the shot, because I’m the bitter

Jealous type]

In spite of well-practiced telepathy, compounded by mini-movies,

Spontaneously scripted screenplays, my mind could only alter

So much of reality.  I gave up solipsism the moment I figured

You’re free to choose unchoose me!

So, I think, but it could just be me, but I think, now, hear me

First before you answer.  Can you hold my hand, or wrap your

Arms around my shoulder (or whatever intimate manifest within

The zone of your comfort) while someone takes our picture.

Pretend.  Truth is variable and meaning is amorphous.  Just

For this purpose:  photographic evidence! my love.

So that in the future, year 2051 A.D. (After Denial), I could tell

My grandchildren of this one great love that got away.  “Here,

Look!”  Pointing at our almost fully smudged old picture.  “That’s

him, he was adorable one second, and gone the next.”  I’d appear

miserable, as I explain how things didn’t work out. 

“Why didn’t things work out?”  They’d all ask.

“Now, remember when you were younger, 4 or 5 years old, and

we discussed Eleatic Philosphers of Old Greek?  Parmenides?  Does

that name ring a bell?”

“Yes!”  They’d say in perfect synchrony.

“Who is his favorite student?”

“Zeno!”  Again, they all answer at the same time.

“Well, Zeno argued that motion is impossible.  In his argument  

‘The Dichotomy’ he said that there is no motion, because that

which is moved must arrive at the middle before it arrives at

the end, and so on ad infinitum.  The object travels the infinite

half-ways but never arrives at the destination.”

“Ahuh.”  You could see them captivated.

“Remember, distance, my children, will always overpower

freewill.  Now, go to sleep, and in the future, you should know

better.  Consider this story a warning.”

That’s far easier than telling them I deluded myself.

I’m still a philosophy major.  Don’t ever forget that my dear.

.

A lot of people have undergone, and lots would still undergo, the agony in deciding whether or not to declare their undying affection to someone. But most just endure the torture of keeping silent and suppressing the truth. Why the choice?
Telling the truth is not as virtuous as most religions would have wanted us to believe, that is if by virtuous we mean to say it is naturally and inherently good. Truth hurts. Reality bites. Haven’t we heard enough? I guess we haven’t. We seem to have this addiction of dwelling in pain. How have we become so masochistic? Perhaps when religion has implicitly taught us to equate virtue with pain and vice with pleasure.
We are human beings, and perhaps emotional pain, besides logic, is something that separates us from the rest of the kingdom animalia. Like what Agent Smith said in The Matrix, human beings couldn’t handle sweet perfection (which was the original model of the Matrix world that later on failed) because we define our reality through suffering and misery, and anything less than that, anything remotely close to perfection, our sanity cannot manage. So inspite of our complaints, we feel that pain is a natural condition of life. But the tricky part that I recently learned is that no matter how much we, perhaps unwittingly, embrace suffering we’d rather choose to hurt ourselves than let others hurt us, even if the former is frequently more intoxicating and debilitating than the latter.
When we love, romantically speaking, we rarely choose to declare our love because we know doing so would make us vulnerable. It is wrong to open ourselves out to someone who could take our emotions away, just to wrestle with them only to later on throw them away. We’d rather choose to suffer in silence. Most of the time, this option is extremely melancholy, worse than the fear of rejection or deliberate deception, and it seems only natural that a person would prefer this option. Why? because it’s personal, because self-inflicted pain is more acceptable than one that is externally inflicted. Why? because that’s how we embrace life. Besides, misery should not seek company; misery should be taken care of without it.
I find the act of confessing our undying love similar to suicide, and I know a lot of people will agree with me on this. This is not only because our honesty would necessarily cost us our dear lives, but more because of the idea of the act being irreversible. In suicide, if we succeed, we can’t say, “whoops, I didn’t mean to cut my wrist and loose five liters of blood”, or cry “I’m sorry, I didn’t know jumping off the 40th floor would crash my skull and make my brain splatter on the ground,” or wail “Whoa, so walking in front of a very fast-moving vehicle would be fatal, I have to tell the others, I have to live.” We can’t shout apologies, and say sorry can we come back to life now? When we kill ourselves, we die. Confessing our love would be quite similar, although not as gory as it sounds.
Confession obviously uses words, and when words fly we cannot catch ‘em. Once we say, “I love you,” we really can’t take it back by saying, “just kidding” or “gotcha, didn’t I?” Well, we can say some could get away with it, and I have to agree only if the object of desire has an IQ of 60. The thing is, once we utter words of devotion, we just have to face the consequences, and most of the time, I have to say we are terrified of the consequences. Although the chances could go either way, meaning, it could either cause our heart to jump for joy or for it to flounder in pain, we only rivet our attention on the latter possibility. The only way that we think we could avoid exacerbating the agony would be by convincing ourselves that our hearts will never jump for joy, otherwise we might get our hopes up and by doing so would only worsen our condition in case floundering in pain is the possibility that ensues. Defense mechanism my friends, that’s what it is.
And in my case, there is that awful stage where I almost hope for the plausibility of him knowing how I feel about him, that maybe I don’t have to confess and that I only have to affirm whatever assumption he has of me. That’s when I hate him the most. I have the audacity to hope that he might discover it for himself. But whenever I think I am giving him the liberty to assume, it seems his density level goes beyond any scientific formula could ever compute.
I have to ask, why then should I let him in? Why should I share this suffering, this burden? Why should I utter the words “I love you”, when this would mean I will end up joining those herds of romantic crooks who have misused and abused the phrase, they’ve trivialized it so much it no longer bears the meaning of pure and genuine affection. I’m too good for that, I won’t give in. Between suffering in silence and losing my life in honesty, I would choose the safer one, I would rather keep my mouth sealed.
But what difference does it make, I still suffer, I still writhe in despair. In the end, I want something to hold on to. I want to be proven wrong, tell me to choose the other option.

Have you ever met this person?

This guy who stares at you when you’re looking the other way.

With him, you could use words that you thought could only exist in old literary works of authors long gone. Your vocabulary will never go to waste because you know he knows exactly what you’re talking about. So you decide never to filter, as you float in polysyllabic bliss.

You’d have long conversations, and you’d realize despondency is a thing of the past. You don’t have to be gloomy… you don’t have to drown in misery just to impress him. And just when you are about to impress him more, it’s too late, he’s way ahead of the game.

You’d mock him, out of sheer endearment, and he’d laugh immediately, and you didn’t even have to say “I was just being funny.”

He’s your match in every way, and he’d make sure to point that out.

Have you met this person who’d tell you how much he knows you? And he would do it in the most trivial and mundane manner, and you’d know.

You’d cunningly say something vague, afraid of telling the truth. Your words would have meanings more than you care to admit, but he’d get it. He’d indulge your ambiguity, and he’d deliberately respond to all possible interpretations, and you’d have this long seemingly simultaneous forking correspondence. Both of you would revel, immersed in the exquisite confusion.

When you spend time together, you’d talk fast, you couldn’t stop the verbal diarrhea. Your mind would race… flights of ideas competing to be muttered under breath. You would exhaust yourself in panic… knowing you couldn’t freeze the moment, nor trap yourself in that split-second before you’d realize one of you has already turned his back about to walk the opposite direction.

He’d do something out of the ordinary, and you’d both act as if it’s nothing special. Still, you’d end up on the floor, walking on all fours, searching for something. He’d ask what you’re doing, and you’d say, “Nothing. It jumped off of my chest just now.” He’d start laughing again, and then he’d raise his right hand, he’d say, “Oh, this old thing?” Aparrently, he has his fingers wrapped around it the whole time. And you’d find yourself stuck, deciding if you still want to take it back.

In spite of ridiculously long emotional sommersaults, there are moments you would stop breathing, afraid that any small gesture would cause him to disappear.

Have you ever met this person?

If you have, tell him to call me.

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