Disclaimer: If you think this post is about you, then it is about you and whatever you want to do with the information written in this blog post is all up to you. But know that there is always the possibility that it is not you. Have fun.

 

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I have a friend who's only experienced her first crush at the age of 23. And it's exhausting looking after and caring for an adult who has the romantic maturity of a 13 years old.

Her cluelessness on how to handle the angst, the joy, the beauty of pining at such a late age makes me think (makes me feel grateful (heh)) that I've had mine, constantly, over the period of my life. Imagine the time I'll be wasting, the experience I'll be missing, if the same thing happened to me. Stunted in the front of romance until it was all too late. (To be fair, nothing is ever to late, but imagine all the fun stuff you can do if you enter a relationship when you're more mature, taking with you all the arsenal you've collected through years of stupid teenage obsessions, puppy loves, and senseless pining. Imagine all the time wasted, lessons that won't be learned, mistakes that you inadvertently will try to hold on to and turn a blind eye on if everything happened to you in a span of 6 months when you're 24, straight, and is panicking because you are in a hurry to find a suitable suitor for you to marry.) (that's not me, that's her).

She made me think of what I've learned from all of my almost-romances. Three, to be exact. All girls (which is a fact that made me realise that I can like boys, I can crush on boys, but I will never love one), that have changed me for the better. Always for the better (even if at the moment when that lesson was thrown to my face, better was the last word that I had in relation to it.)

 

One taught me love, one taught me patience, one taught me pain (heh)

 

But for me it's on reverse

 

How funny is it that my /big three/ loves really did… taught me pain, taught me patience, and taught me love, in their own unique ways.

Lets walk down the memory lane, shall we?

 

Phyllis.

I guess she was my first love.

Disclaimer: for some reason, I have this bad habit of falling for people that I can never have because of location and distances (aka I always fall for someone living a minimum of 4 hours flight away). That's a problem in and on itself, but that's a whole different can of worms for another session. Now back to the topic…

We've only ever chatted through an instant messaging app, but I think she really was my first love. As she was too my first heart break.

I know I could never have her, or be with her, or have a future with her. And I think that she also thought the same. I think. I think she liked me back. But I could never ask her that because well… See the start of this paragraph, that's your answer. But that's fine, at least for me it was. Having someone that care enough for you to ask how your day's been? To stay up past time differences just so we could talk about silly, mindless things? Listening to each others' woes, having inside jokes and all that ? I've never had that before and so I thought, isn't that love? Love has been defined as something way more trivial than what we had so why couldn't ours be called as such?

But one day she disappeared. (when my world needed her most)

Just like an exorcised demon, banished ghost, she was nowhere to be found. And I didn't know the contact to her family, or any of her irl friends. We just talked not even 6 hours before and in the morning when I searched her up on my chatting app, she was gone. Gone.

It was an understatement to say that I was disappointed. How devastating was it for me to know that my first love, someone you fully trust, didn't even trust that you could wait. Or understand. Or earned the right to at least know of their whereabouts. I guess, I was not her number one. I learned on that night where I just lay numb on my bed, too cold even if it was in the middle of a late spring night, that I was never no one's number one. I didn't even start crying until I've finished my mad scramble trying to find at least a trace of her on the internet that she failed to delete. I couldn't. So I walked the earth from then on trying to keep myself from going off the deep ledge and sending her a long winded, drunk message that told her of how much I loved her and how much she'd unknowingly hurt me. Distance and impossibilities be damned.

But I never sent those messages. I'm glad I didn't. Though here I am, writing this small biography for all to see.

She disappeared for months on end and for a long beat I thought I would never find someone that I can love the way I loved her. The way I cared for her. Nobody could ever make me feel as happy and giddy as the way I woke up in the morning to a red circle on top left corner of my chatting app that promised me a late goodnight message and that little ram sticker that we used as an inside joke, our own way to say goodnight without having to say goodnight. I thought she would be the end of my line but then I met Amarita.

 

 

 

Amarita

Oh Amarita.

My second love who for a long time I thought was my first.

Old towns, rainy days, romantic dinners, staying at your house for nearly two weeks. How could I not?

As per the norm for me, love didn't come instantly. But she is so beautiful I couldn't help but feel a certain form of attraction when I first saw her. She's just a friend, though. I was still hung up of Phyllis I couldn't allow my heart to open for Amarita. We're just friends.

But one day, after she's visited me on a whim and in turn I deliberately went to visit her, we rode the train. She sat beside me as we shared earbuds, cold fingertips still acclimating to the warm air of the compartment trying to hold a pen as we solved a sudoku puzzle on a newspaper someone left at the seats we took, and I fell in love.

She put her head on my shoulder to catch a short rest after we solved the puzzle and I fell in love.

The first thing I saw was a flurry of cherry blossom petals. How cheesy, I couldn't believe my weeaboo days are still haunting me. But maybe that was because she had her cherry blossom scented hair so close to my nose that I just couldn't help but imagine ourselves standing on a long brick road in Japan, cherry blossom petals raining around us.

But other than that scene that could essentially be pulled from any a slice of life shoujo romance, I could also see us living at a small old town, small apartment, small country, waking up and working our small jobs, going back home and having our small dinners. Summer nights will be small and winter nights will be even smaller. Just silence and smallness and freshly made mint tea and I would die with her in that small apartment of old age because our weak, small hearts could no longer contain the love that we felt for each other.

Or at least mine. Because I didn't know if she did or not. I didn't even know if she likes women or not.

Hilarious, isn't it? I think it is.

Add to that the fact that on our last day together, Phyllis came back into my life. Just, perfect.

We said goodbye. I said goodbye to her small apartment and her small country and I read her small letter on the plane back home and cried so hard a flight attendant was concerned for my wellbeing.

I love her and I decided to do my Masters at her small, old country. Wait for me, I told her. In two years I will come back to you so wait for me. As a friend, as a lover, as anything. Just wait.

But Phyllis came back and I loved her too. Even if she told me she's met a boy at her university that she crushes on, I still loved her.

Honestly, I couldn't understand how I managed to survive that months where one side of my heart soared everytime Amarita chatted me up with her soft chatting style, and the other side was being slashed open with Phyllis' scathing stories of how her day's went, with that lover boy of hers. (With a lot of alcohol, that's the answer. A lot of alcohol).

This might sound bad, and anti-climactic, but I couldn't remember how my story with Phyllis ended. We just grew apart, I guess. She busy with her university, and me busy with mine. Although, it didn't help that in the meanwhile, I confessed to Amarita through a cheesy handwritten letter and she reciprocated my feeling.

She liked me back. She actually wanted to kiss me before I went back home. She sent me the tracing of her hand, which she told to press against my cheeks as a replacement for her slapping the of my face for making her… feel.

I never consider myself as a person who can easily cry but I couldn't stop sobbing when I was reading her letter. As for the first time, someone liked me back. Liked me. Imagine that. But I loved her. So much. That I was afraid.

I was afraid. That was my sin going into this relationship.

Because as with Phyllis, I knew we didn't have a prospect in the future together. Yes, all those small fantasies still exist but they were just that. Fantasies, that I fear to share with her because I don't want to scare her off. I fear of offending her, of throwing her off with how much I cared for her, so I didn't show it. At all.

I didn't show her anything because I wanted to show her everything.

How stupid.

So this time it was me who slowly stepped back into the shadows. I didn't even try. I admit it. I didn't even try and she went away and it's all my fault. I was the one who confessed but she was the one who always chatted me up first. How selfish? I dumped my feelings on her hand and left her to clean it up.

She has all the right to never forgive me. Or to accept the apology that I never gave her. And here I am, again, writing about our relationship for all to see. I guess this is my apology.

I'm not going to go to your small, old country until 2020. I will not be going to your small, old country for you. I'm not going to wait two years just so we could spend 30 minutes pretending nothing ever happened between us. But I guess it was all my fault. I'm sorry it has to be you that I learned all my patience from.

 

 

Gemma

And then there was Gemma.

When my love for Amarita winded, came along Gemma. (And here I am, complaining that some people just can't go without having boyfriends or girlfriends even just for a day and will always make sure to have one lining up just in case the current one they have flakes off.)

I love Gemma. What other thing can I say? I love her.

And what scares me is how I don't mind if she doesn't love me back. Or if we didn't have any chance for a future together. Or if the only thing we'll have as a fighting chance is a week in Korea that still hasn't even happened.

Because I love her, and for some reason, I know she loves me too. Even if just as a friend, she loves me. And that's enough.

It scares me, this type of love that I feel for her. It's foreign, it's unlike the ones I've ever felt before. It is romantic, yes. Possessive too, as I'm just naturally a very jealous person.  But I have somehow acknowledged and accepted this hopelessness. Yes, I know we won't end up together. The chance for that happening is less than 20% and I know it. But weirdly, unlike in the two previous case, I was not deterred by it. For her, I'm willing to go halfway, I'm willing to scare myself and scare her while I'm scaring myself. I won't run away from her, but I will always say yes if she wants to run away with me.

Even if I'm not her number one, I don't mind. As long as I have her in my life, I won't mind.

I remember when we first knew each other I thought, 'where have you been all my life?' How amazing of a friend could you be? How much similarities do we have? Are you me? Oh, you like that obscure thing too? A close friend of mine introduced me to her and we ended up growing closer than we ever was with that close friend.

I remember when I first thought that the thing I'm feeling for her was more than just platonic. She sent me a gif of herself after testing a new makeup she bought and it felt like someone gave my heart a pinch. I spent quite a few months mulling over the question, "do I love her because she's the best friend I've ever had in the longest time, or is this love love?"

In the end, I decided to ignore the question altogether and decided for myself that it was really love love. Even if in the future I learned that it was not, I don't mind. At least it was love and I've experienced it, type be damned.

Oh how much do I love her.

Every stories that I've written from March 2018 are my secret confessions to her. I wonder if she knew this. I wonder if she knew that every relationships I've written since I started asking her to read my stories is a wish for me to her.

"She often wondered, how could they be the first person that she'd ever grew to care so much that she don't mind if things didn't work out for them in the end. She didn't mind if they ended up only lasting for a year, for six months, for another week, even.

Because she only wanted to experience the world with them, happiness and sufferings combines. All and any, as none could exist just by itself. So however short, or however long they last, be it as friends, girlfriends, buddies, anything. As long as she got to experience it with them, then so be it.

So be it."