It’s not Love, After All

Juicy Peppah

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I FELL in love with a great man.

I could have just seen him around the college walking, but wouldn’t catch my eye. Not until that very evening of July, when we found ourselves in each other’s company, the music he used to sing me soothing the chambers of that quivering flesh that pumps a mass of blood in my system. There was warmth in his voice that made me feel significant, there were promises in his songs that made me feel secure. The words he used to utter were like a blanket of flames around my dead body.

He treated me like a royal highness—he was my champion, too prepared to risk his life to preserve mine, although I really did not ask for it. How could such a great, stunning defender hide under the cloak of an ordinary passerby?

On the second thought, he wasn’t any mango person, as I recall not really seeing him around until I had the chance to. He was a mind full of wisdom and a heart overflowing with kindness. He was a hand with an exceptional power to persuade keen eyes whenever it holds a pen or plays with the computer keyboard (as it is the computer age, I doubt he still uses pen and paper to speak his mind). He was a small tongue giving off without reluctance sugarcoated words that incredibly drive one to work.

And before I could stop my heart, I found myself confined in his… well, attention, and was and am still hungry for more. I’ve had a total of three harvests and more to tell him what I used to feel, but as I was young, selfish, and immature, I screwed it. My heart, mind, body, and soul were controlled by lies, and for a number of moments, there I was, out of myself, no longer knowing who I really was, because much as I wanted to try being who I must be before him, I got lost and lost in a thick forest of lies, becoming mad as hell.

I fell in love with a great man, that was the bottom line, but I kept telling myself that I wasn’t in love. He was a friend; a friend. But at the back of my mind I could see his fingers placing a golden ring around mine. I could feel his arms wrap me, and I could hear his love humming softly in my ears.

More harvests passed and I was glad I could look him in the eye after days and months of not keeping in touch with him. I could communicate with him as human as I could and become a friend when we do so. But way deep down inside, I was bathing in a tub of ice cubes immersed in a boiling lake of magma. Just when I thought I was over him, the feelings showed. He might not see me feel so, but it was clearly visible to the four chambers of my heart and the two hemispheres of my brain. And it felt just like arrows of poisonous pins—stinging.

I fell in love with a great man. Much as I wanted to squash out the idea, it always hung around, eating every piece of my flesh when thoughts of him would come flowing back. But I should know that until I take to heart that the feelings are still there, I would only continue lying and lying to myself. Truly, it was I whom I fool the most in this situation.

Just recently, I told him to slay everything that keeps him away from his pursuit and be honest—or maybe be brave (I don’t think he could lie, but maybe he could). I could have not been deliberate (because I started to make a habit of exercising the creative side of my mind, actually), but I sent it anyway. I wouldn’t want to see people commit the same mistakes as I did.

I fell in love with a great man. That was what I used to think for my years of confinement in the memories of him. But it was not at all true. I could have treated him humanly and adored his kindness and attention, but that feeling I kept masking with the word love was actually selfishness. I wanted him to come back and show the same thought that used to captivate me when I was young, because I wanted to be pampered and nothing else.

But things, he used to quote, were not always what they seem to be. He may not come back as he was before, but there is always room for embracing new things… most especially the new him.

I am glad though that he became a part of my life. He was one of those who brought out the best in me, and I’d be forever indebted to him for that. As I grow up, I know I will always remember that great man I thought I fell in love with, but for that time, maybe as some great man who had served his purpose… to guide me on my way… well, to wherever the hands of life may take me.