Let Go

Youngblood : Busted

JA
Inquirer News Service

I WAS busted. It was the first time (and perhaps the last) I risked expressing my feelings, and I was sent painfully crashing back to reality by the experience. It is not that he didn't have a good reason not to return my feelings for him. I do understand his point: hearing someone say that she loves you, especially if she is someone you don't know at all, can definitely freak you out.

I don't want to call myself pathetic, but I managed to sustain my feelings for him for seven years, ever since the time I met him. We're not really strangers to each other. At least, we had seen each other and we knew each other's name. It just happened that I knew a great deal more about him than he did about me.

Friends say that I was hasty in saying what I felt for him was love. After all, it was his intelligence that first drew me to him. Secondly, he had the ambition--no, drive--to succeed. Of course, there was the small factor that he offered security. And all in all, he had practically everything I was looking for in a mate. So, in my friends' estimation, it wasn't love at all. I simply didn't give the politically correct answer.

They say that if someone asks you why you love a person, you're not supposed to mention his positive qualities--not his looks, his status, what he has to offer and, least of all, the capability of his mind for higher level thinking. You love him simply because you love him. You love him because it's him.

I don't know how to explain to them that when you love, you don't love the entirety of the person all at once. You start loving the things that made you like him in the first place--and they may be as petty and shallow as his face, his car or his mind. Then, you start building on that and you begin to love his other "attributes"--until you finally learn to love the "whole" of him. You can't love someone without starting from loving something little and, yes, petty about him.

To say "I love him simply because I love him; it's him" would be the final answer. But there are initial answers before you reach this point.

I started loving him because of his intelligence, because of his drive, because of the way he was able to reach for his dreams--and yes, I loved him because it's him.

But he couldn't return my love, because he didn't know me "that much." Oookay.

My well-meaning friends have advised me time and again to forget him. But perhaps it's true what they say about the wisest of men being the most foolish in love. He was more or less a part of me for seven long years and it's not easy to remove something from your system in the wink of an eye.

Now I tell myself that I'll never risk my heart like that again. I cannot stand a second heartbreak. Actually, making the first move and being honest like that wasn't even my kind of thing. I did it because I didn't want to wake up one day to realize I was dying without telling him about it. All right, so perhaps I should have thought about it a million times more, and probably pondered the best way and the perfect time to say it. Sometimes I ask myself how things would have turned out had I waited a little more and probably given him more time to know me, and possibly, like me.

Now, we've stopped being comfortable buddies. We used to e-mail each other and share stories. I know he's busy now, but I can't help but think that he's just using it as an excuse to cover up an awkward situation.

I don't regret anything. What would I get crying over spilled milk? That's how I try to view things now. As one friend said, at least I told him. The greatest regret comes when you are not able to tell him.

I didn't lose anything--well, probably a bit of my pride. But it's something I can get back. I'm the same old person, just a little wiser now from the experience.

I have already gotten over the fact that I was busted and rejected. I have yet to get over him. Like I said, he's "Mr. Ideal Guy." But most of the time, you don't get the ideal or the perfect, you go for the right thing or person.

I have yet to meet the man who could inspire and move me the way he moved and inspired me. Or perhaps, I just don't notice him because all my attentions are focused on someone else. This is what my friends have been telling me.

I'm not closing my heart to other possibilities. I'm just afraid that I wouldn't be fair to the next guy who comes along because he just might end up as "Mr. Second Best." It's a long, uphill climb to closure.

I have to be honest and say that yes, there is still some small seed of hope in my heart that eventually he will learn to love me. But I'm not going to waste the rest of my life banking on that. I know when to quit and give up.

It will come. It will come. Yes, I'm probably a sucker for pain and self-inflicted torture. I still enjoy the bittersweet feeling the whole experience of loving him gives me. Yes, it's love, despite what they say. If he would only give me a chance, I'd like to show him how much he means to me. But when the time comes that I need to let his memory go, I will find a way.

That's how life goes.

JA, 22, teaches in a state university.