Sunday, August 04, 2013

withers away @ 6:46 pm

Countdown: 6 days.

It's something Mystical

I'm cnp-ing this from FB. Because I have no guts to just hit the "share" button...


She stared at her phone – he was last seen just five minutes ago but why.. why hasn’t he messaged at all? They’ve been messaging back and forth every single day for the past month; the length and depth of each message increasing with each new message and then.. and then today, the messages just stopped.

Surely he didn’t lose his phone – he was last seen just five minutes ago.

“Oh my god, have I stooped to such an obsessive stalking level?” she sighed. Perhaps. She knew she was falling and was sinking even deeper..

The truth that she hated to admit is that she had fallen deeper for him over their conversations. Over the dreams she had of him. Over the good morning and good night messages. They made her smile. His smile.. made her heart flutter. Every single time. She wish she could simply tell him all that.. but..

Why isn’t he messaging me? Did I say or do something wrong? Has he lost interest in me? Maybe he never was interested to begin with. What if I messaged him first? No, that’ll make me seem desperate. I don’t want to annoy him. Maybe he’s busy. Yea, he’s definitely busy. Or maybe..

She sighed again. It was almost midnight. She had been thinking about him the whole day. Waiting for his message. It never came.

“I miss you” – she began typing a new message to him.

‘I can’t send this. No way. He’d think I’m clingy. But I do miss him. Too much. And I hate feeling this way – the not knowing,’ she thought to herself.

The thing about love is.. there are different ‘stages’ before we fall. She.. was at stage 3.

She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath and against her own sanity.. she hit the send button.

In a matter of seconds, she saw that he was “online”.

Surely he’s reading the message now.. but then, just as abruptly, he was back to “last seen”. No reply.

She clutched her phone close to her heart, waiting, hoping for his reply as she drifted off to sleep in tears.

There are five stages before we fall.. she is now in stage 4.

-

Lately, I’ve been trying to complete a certain other love story that I titled “Five before we fall”.. it was meant to be a personal narrative exploring five different stages we often go through leading to the point where ‘love’ becomes more than just a word..

But I’ve abandoned the story.

Because my current reflection of reality has changed; and reality is painful to write.

You know, stories of potential romance are not so simple or straightforward. Most boy meets girl stories don’t and won’t end in happily ever in love.

“Five before we fall” was meant to be this “other” love story. What could’ve been. What may never be.

It was meant to explore the feelings, the thoughts, the stages and the games we’re all guilty of playing from the minute we find ourselves attracted to a person and as we go through the stages of falling..

For guys, it’s about the chase.
For girls, it’s playing hard to get.

We play these games because we’re unsure. Of feelings. Of thoughts. Second thoughts. Third. Fourth. The whole night. Every fucking night. We long to receive and read messages from a certain someone. We want to hear their voice, see their smiles, know how their day went and everything about him/her..

Eventually, we might reach the point where we know what or how we feel about the other person.. but we don’t know how they think and feel about us. So we play the games we do.. cautiously testing the frozen ice. To be sure it’s safe. To be sure we won’t plunge ourselves through the cracked ice just because we were a bit too quick, a bit too eager to take that next step when.. well, when the ice wasn’t ready.

But playing the game is tiring. It’s confusing. It’s uncertain. Frustrating. It consumes your energy, thoughts and nights. You can’t stop thinking about this one person throughout the day, and especially during the moments just before you go to sleep; then again when you wake up in the morning – worse, you actually start visualizing a future together with this person who you have absolutely no idea what or how they feel about you.

So we play our cards cautiously and patiently even though it’s absolutely killing us. Because try too hard and she might see you as desperate and get turned off. Play too hard to get.. he might give up trying and move on.

And to add to the complication, there are even times the mixed signals get perceived wrongly.

A girl might think that a guy is into her.. but he isn’t. Or not yet. A guy might think the girl is not into him.. but she already is. And it scares her.

And it’s exactly why we play the games that we do. Because we’re trying to figure one another out hopefully without getting ourselves hurt. Because the one who admits falling first might end up hurting the most.

You see, there are no rules to this game that we play, but i'd like to believe there are different stages..

The five stages that I was going to revolve my narrative around were of:

Attraction. Interaction. Affection. Confession. Decision.

In this process of falling, the moment has to be perfect. Two people who are attracted to each other and find chemistry through interaction, have to both come to the point of mutual affection at the same time before the moment of confession and decision.. because here’s the brutal truth, whoever confesses first (and when the other person isn’t ready).. loses.

You developing feelings and confessing too soon might scare him/her off. He/she might back off because maybe they feel you’re getting too serious too soon while they’re still at the “figuring out” stage.

So we play the games we play. Threading carefully on thin ice. Waiting for the opportune moment. That moment when both of you just know there’s no need to play any more games because both of you are already pretty sure of what you feel for each other even if it’s not said yet.. then comes confession and if the moment is right and you two make a mutual favorable decision to take a chance and make an effort in love.. you win. You both win.

This unspoken game we play.. there are no rules.

Well, okay maybe just one.. we have the freedom to love anyone we want; what we don’t have.. is the right to control the way they feel just because we feel a certain way towards them.

Just because we love, loved or still love someone.. doesn't meant we can expect or demand the one we have feelings for to feel the same way for us.

Feelings take time to grow in or out of. That’s the most painful or potentially beautiful part.

It’s the reason why I titled this attempted narrative “Five before we fall” – the five stages before we either fall in love or fall out of love.

I’ve abandoned the story. I'll not be continuing it anymore.

But to you reading this, if you haven’t already met your special one.. here’s to our one day, one person, and many beautiful moments together with this other.