I was thinking the other day about unrequited love.
I am still thinking about it, about silly, irrational obsession, about crazy things one can do to let their feelings detonate…
I have been such a person…I have been the pitiable, pathetic person who would act nothing or do everything but without any success. I still feel the impact of this emotion, its unwanted, repulsive consequenses to my everyday life, to my everyday thoughts…I feel the shame, the remorse and moreover the pain of all this situation, and I -sometimes- laugh at my foolishness. The most of the time I regret the memories, all products of my own weak mind.
I have been so foolish, so unbearably foolish, and I know it. And I cannot stop think of it. Am I crazy? I don’t use the phrase “Am I turning crazy” because this situation is old. Fifteen years old.
I want so much to talk to somebody about it, I wish there was a happy ending so as to write my story down…before I forget the meaningless parts and all that remains is solid remorse…
I am thirty three years old now. But human heart is an uncommonly weird part of our body in so many mysterious ways.
When I was eighteen I had a crush…I fell in love with a boy two years older than me. I don’t know why it happened, as we were not friends , we didn’t speak to each other. It was simple: one day I just saw him driving his car (not an expensive or luxurious one) and suddenly everything fell apart. An atomic bomb exploded inside me, and I was wretchedly addicted to him.
But that is a poor description of my feelings, not only because my affection was immeasurably stronger but because an inexplicable hatred made me detest him the same moment. I pained to see him and as soon as I was facing him I prayed I could do something violent to erase him and his involuntary influence on me. I usually ran away to avoid him.
Who knows? Maybe love and hate are closer than we believe, after all…
The problem would be relatively sufferable, if I had only my own thoughts to fight – I would be capable of evading his disputable but powerful allurements – but, you see, he seemed to be aware of my presence, too.
I can’t describe it properly, not if I want to be unbiased. But maybe I shouldn’t be.
He looked just as if he knew when I was around, he was locating me with his eyes automatically, even if I was in the middle of a hundred people. His eyes, ahh his eyes… so many sufferings because of his eyes…He was looking at me and there was always a small smile in his eyes, full of incomprehensible sentiments and knowledge. He understood, he knew what he did to me…and yet he was cruel enough to test my resistance again and again….
I learned everything I could about him, but always in the most inconspicuous way. The morning I was wishing to meet him, and the night I was dreaming of him, I haunted him soul and mind.
I couldn’t even think of approaching him-I felt I would break apart and die. I was miserable and happy at the same time, alive and dead in the same body. Addicted to something I wasn’t allowed to touch, or I would die instantly…
Why? Why he should be so crucial to me? Why he acted as he did? Was he doing it, or I was mental, I made all up? All these looks were figments of my imagination? No,I am not that crazy, no…no
Obsession was the right name for what I encountered. There was no logical explanation, no argument, no standard for this experience, only feelings that threatened to choke me, that strangled me and I could find no way to save myself.
And he seemed to understand everything, to enjoy my sufferings, to laugh at me…that’s what I dreaded most: his mocking looks and his contradictory tenderness.
Funny, isn’t it?
I could foretell his reactions, I could guess his thoughts,his likes, his interests and I hadn’t spoken to him once!
And what is funniest is that I was right, always right. A strange intuition connected me with him, with the air surrounding him and tuned me in to his moods, but unfortunately, not his thoughts. Not his real thoughts.
A strange mixture of happiness and wretchedness coloured my days and I could live like this for ever, I wished I could prolong the torture infinitely because if the pain should stop, my life would stop as well.
I was in danger when I was near him. I felt it. I was in despair when I was away. Every breath was for him, and I never stopped planning how to extract more details about him, more little things about his life. I imagined myself as an insignificant shadow somewhere around him. I couldn’t separate my future from his, but I couldn’t put myself in his life in a more “active” role either. This was improbable, this was unachievable, my whole existence wouldn’t be enough to sustain it.
I was little, insignificant, inadequate for him. That’s the way I was thinking for somebody so far from me. Somebody that I had never spoken to. Somebody who could easily be somebody entirely different from what I had imagined and sensed. I might have been completely wrong.
So how to cope with such a situation?
I didn’t know. I just let myself enjoying the tortures, most of which were just fantasies -or not? Silly, small questions that had no real answers.
“Oh, come on! Wake up!”
I shouted every now and then to myself, but without any success.
He soon left for another city, because he was attending University there. But he was never absent. He kept coming very often, almost every weekend, and I was so happy that I had to pass all this over and over again.
And he was always the same.
Why was he doing it? Even now that I am trying to recall all his strange behavior, I am sure I cannot find any mistake on my part. He was doing it. He was synchronised with me. He was there, standing by me, looking at me, driving me crazy. But, I must admit, he never did anything else. He was just shooting his frustrating smiles towards me, killing me with the most tender, the most soft weapon. The connection was implying a kind of unspoken-of intimacy, which perfused every bit of my soul.
I was bewitched -bedazzled!
After a while, his visits became rare and soon I found out that he had a relationship. One may say that I took it pretty bad, as I got sick and had fever for a week. I was as happy as one under one’s gravestone can be. I suffered and pained for a long period of time, but I survived. I decided to go on, and shroud his memory in deepest oblivion. Soon, I left my birthplace to attend University myself.
Several years passed – I met him occasionaly and there was always a bitter heave of sentiments long forlorn- during which I tried to find my way in life and meet my soul mate in another man’s person. It was not a surprise that I failed-I was so got used to rejection that all my choices turned out to major failures. I was wounded, sad, alone. I was diminished to nothingness.
I don’t have many memories of this period, I don’t want to have.
But some day my old affection woke up, dominating, demanding, consuming, unyielding. It was funny how it happened. I had forgotten it.
It was a beautiful morning of September. I had gone downtown to have my modem checked, and I had decided to go home walking. I was feeling calm and walking in the crowded streets with my head full of relaxing thoughts. I was daydreaming. My eyes weren’t paying attention to where I was going. I was looking the blue sky, I was savouring the perfume of the cool breeze, imagining I was a leaf. Instictively, I turned to look in front of me. No prior warning, not the slightest hint. My eyes met his eyes in a violent second.
He, of all people, was there, walking among the people, in front of me.
Opposite me.
Looking at me.
I had never experienced sudden death and ressurection at the same time. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t fly away. I couldn’t but I had to go on walking. I felt dizzy, panicked, choked. God, why?
He looked as if he wanted to say “Hello”.
Panic, panic, panic.
What, what, what am I supposed to do? How could I avoid all this and not look like a mad person?
He was approaching. He was near.
There was nothing in my mind, only blended coloures.
No conscious thoughts. Panic.
Fear. Primal fear. Self-preservation. Defense. There were not many things I could do. It was either the one or the other. Speak to him or not. Not.
I just looked the other way and passed by him. It was as good as being burnt alive.
My feet should have walked on their own account. I didn’t control anything: my mind was detached from my body, from reality. I could as well be a ghost. Unfortunately, I wasn’t. It was September 11th, 2001.
A day of catastrophes.
I don’t remember how I managed to go home.
It’ s a miracle that I wasn’t hitten by some stray car, sent by destiny to eliminate me, if there was anything left that wasn’t already wrecked.
A few hours later, the attacks at the World Trade Center were announced on TV news broadcasts and I felt just as if I were responsible for all this bad luck. My own crabby destiny jinxed the lives of so many other innocent people.
How random can this be? In my view it was highly improbable that all the catastrophes happened the same day.
I was sad and bitter and hopeful once more.
Ηopeful?
What for?
What did I want?
What have I done?
What would he think of me?
Would I be laughing stock for him ever since?
Oh, that last one seemed such a concrete truth, that I wished I could change country, hemisphere or even planet-if possible- so as to avoid him more successfully from now on.
There are not many things to recall from the period that followed: I was giving exams for my university diploma and I soon found enough consolation in my massive books.
Things stayed unaltered for a long time: I rarely met him and I didn’t intend to bumb into him either. I was furious.
I was a reasonable person. I had a life to live. Obviously, he could live his own life pretty satisfactorily. He had a girl-friend. He had a life.
But what I was doing? Mourning over the dead body of my one-sided affection? Lying to myself?
It was pathetic. I was pathetic.
I tried, but I tried in vain. The only thing that I managed to do was that I felt more confident now, just as if knowing that he wasn’t available made me safer.One year or two passed and nothing remarkable happened-except that he was engaged to his girl-friend.
So it was a dead-end.
I felt miserable and static and stupid. Why can’t mind govern heart? Things could be easier.
And here came the summer of 2004.
There were always peculiar coincidences. The summer of the Olympic Games in Athens.
I had a friend in work that was a really lovable and a little lunatic person. We discussed things and when it came to me, I told all that silly story about my adolescence love.
She told me that my being such a coward was of no good to anyone. She believed that he had to account for his behaviour and that there was still hope.
It was so long that I denied my feelings and wishes that my mood should have turned into stone. But, oddly enough, it hadn’t.
She convinced me that it was my right, it was my duty , I had to make my move before he gets married and then, the end comes.
I don’t know how I let her persuade me. It seems that my resistance was weak, after so many years of inner war.
And I agreed to act, for the first time in my life.
Θέμα: Απ: A silly love story Τρι Jun 01, 2010 1:07 pm
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But what should I do?
I wasn’t brave enough to confront him.
And, anyway, what could I tell him? “Hello, do you know I am crazy about you?”
Self respect held me strongly-thank God!- and I didn’t take a decision with a light heart.
I thought that sending him an SMS was a good way to contact him.
But he shouldn’t be able to locate me, only if I wanted him to do so.And I didn’t. I was ashame of my decision, but its realization was inevitable. As though invisible ropes pulled me to my every next step.
Heat, fire, my whole world had turned into a hell landscape. I couldn’t escape it. I liked it. It made me feel alive, it made me feel right.
I needed it.
I should have done it earlier.
I managed to find out his cell number. I bought a SIM so that he could not identify my number.
I sent him the first sms one unfathomable July night, with a full moon.
I just wrote: “I am thinking of you”.
The moment the sms was sent, several brick walls around and inside me broke down (and perhaps some of the debris fell on me ) and I thought that I had just took a step towards the reconstruction of my life. I never expected anything from him, even after all this story would be ended. I didn’t want him to be unfaithful to his fiancee. I just rose in revolt, it was just me being rebellious. I couldn’t hold it to myself anymore. He would be responsible for his acts. I would ask him nothing. Only a small portion of his time. Nothing else.
My heart was drumming impatiently, fever was burning every little particle of me, as I was waiting for his answer.
And it came. It was funny enough, or my nerves were out of control, because the sms made me laugh my head off. He wrote “I think you have mistaken the sender” using the word sender instead of the word recipient.
My next sms was small but stubborn: “No”.
I would have given everything just to see his face: he was freaked out or thinking that someone was pulling his leg? I gave him the time to digest its meaning.
I regret to say that after this moment I cannot recall our conversation in detail. So it would be probably better to relate what happened the rest of the night.
As anyone might think, he was highly suspicious. Firstly he couldn’t believe that this was a truthful statement. He called me many times, but I didn’t speak to him. I answered him only via sms. That drove him mad (and I was enjoying it). He believed I was some friend of his (a male friend) that was joking. He demanded proofs that I was woman. I kept denying speaking to him.
He was really curious. I don’t know what held him and he kept trying to find out who I was. Personally I wouldn’t have done so, and I didn’t ,when, most unexpectedly, it happened to me as well a few months later.But that’s another (ridiculous) story.
It was just curiosity or the stubborness in my words told him that I was sincere? I don’t know, maybe both. He changed his tactics. He agreed that we could talk via sms. Nevertheless, he wasn’t playing fairly. He was calling every now and then, no doubt hoping that I would instictively answer his calls. I didn’t.
And he grew more and more curious.
And I, for the first time since I laid my eyes on him, felt happy and alive.
This was the longest night of my life. A hot, pulsing, July night that surrounded me, embraced me, like something living. Feelings inside me were growing, expanding, filling my heart, my veins , my whole existance with enthusiasm.
And he didn’t give up. He asked me everything, trying to find small details that would reveal who I was. I gave him nothing. He dared me to go and meet him, but that was definitely out of the question.
I don’t remember what early hour of the next day we decided to go to sleep. He might have slept, I don’t know. I was trying to manage all this thinking material in my feverish mind.
He answered my message!
Well, this was the most overwhelming fact of all. He could have denied speaking to a stranger, especially as he was an engaged man, but he didn’t. He spent his night trying to decipher my cryptic messages. Well, this kind of behaviour is not very commendatory of his loyalty, but as long as it depended on me, he would remain faithful to his fiancee. That was an irrefrangible rule. I never stopped thinking of her. No matter what, I felt guilty towards her.
On the other hand, things have turned out better that I had ever imagined.
And he was as sweet and playful and sharp as I always thought he would be.
My own personal miracle happened before my bewildered eyes.
And I let myself believe in it.
I kept my cell phone turned off during daytime. I didn’t want him to call me unexpectedly while I was at work. What should people think if suddenly my mobile rang and I went mad? Keeping my mobile turned off gave me time to be more composed the next morning.
Of course, my mind was fully occupied but with thoughts totaly irrevelant to my work.
I let one more day to pass and the following night I sent him another message. There was a good reason why I did it. Our first contact was the night Greece won a football match in Euro 2004, perhaps the one with Czech Republic. The second one happened the night of the final game.
I remember I had gone for a drive with my friend, because there was so much tense in the atmosphere what with the ongoing football match and my crazy expectations (which undoubtedly were the most important to me-who cares about football these hours of delirium).
I sent him an sms asking what did he think about the outcome of this game.
He was kind of surprised. The choice of the specific moment urged him. He was captive of his curiosity. I was captive of his existence.
He was more pressing this time. He wanted to listen to my voice. He was still thinking I was a guy. Perhaps he was right. I used to send my messages during football matches. It could be some kind of stupid joke. He insisted and -I don’t know how- finally I gave in. I answered his call. I spoke to him out loud. And, funnily enough, I am still alive to tell the story.
I will never be able to express the feelings that I experienced: agony, pain, a urgent need to start crying, joy, a more urgent need to laugh, to sing and dance and heat all over my body.
The words came out easily, without second thought, without effort. What I said or what he answered in return were of no importance. He was very kind. He never told anything insulting. He seemed to be genuinely astonished. He admitted that this situation was the most weird he had ever encountered. My voice sounded familiar to him.
And moreover, he wasn’t disappointed. He didn’t turn angry that I bothered him with the late revelation of my feelings. He should be. He was engaged. But he never mentioned it and I kept it in my mind. I had to remind it to him later, when the time would be appropriate.
But I hadn’t told him my name.
Oooh that made him really mad. He found a new subject to bring on. He wanted to know my name. Well, this wasn’t an absurd demand. Only I wouldn’t tell him, no way, no sir. It would be only too easy to find out more about me. My name isn’t exactly extraordinary, nor very common. It would be a good way to trace me.
So I went on talking to him all night long, carefully avoiding his never-ending attempts to collect vital information about me.
I don’t believe one may live many nights like this during one’s life.
I don’t believe I will, again.
I am thankful I had this night, I am thankful that I was so lucky.
This strange routine was repeated for several days-or should I say nights? I always chose to contact him at night, especially now that the mobile was not used just for sending sms. I had the insane fear that if he should call during daytime, when I would be at work, someone might call my name, and he could be able to hear it (through the mobile-classic delirium).
But he grew impatient. He wanted to see me, he demanded we should meet. I was absolutely determined we shouldn’t (Ha! how many things I was determined not to do from the beginning!).
My mind was always down-to-earth. I knew that if we met, even if we overlook the fact that I was physically, mentally and psychologically incapable of going and meet him, more problems would arise afterwards. What would happen? What would he think of me? What should we do after that? How was I suppose to look at him again? He was engaged, wasn’t he? And the most important, I felt guilty. I felt guilty because I knew he was engaged and I should have never, never dreamt of doing what I did. I felt guilty for his fiancee. Sometimes I was wondering if she was totally ignorant of the whole situation , or he had told her everything and they laughed at me. But I wasn’t brave enough to ask the question.
My friend kept telling me I should go and meet him. She finally talked me into doing it.
I was not so fond of the idea. I was striving for a good reason to avoid it.
When I told him that I agreed to this meeting, he happily informed me that he would come for business affairs in the city I was, after 2 or three days. The day was set. It seemed like Judgement Day to me.
I counted the hours, the minutes to this fatal Saturday. I even kept my phone turned on. He called me to tell me he had set off and that he would be there in a few hours.
I believe I was panicked to death. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t do it.
I was in pain, I was on the threshold of madness.
Minute after minute, time passed slowly and quickly, as if I was trapped in an incomprehensible dimension. I was about to leave mental sanity behind me for ever.
And then he called again. It was the first time I didn’t welcome his call. I hated him. Hated him with every power I had. Detested him. I felt sick.
He was happy and eager for our oncoming meet.
I was about ready to commit murder.
I called him back and told him I wouldn’t go.
He was shocked. He demanded to know why. For the first time he was angry.
I lost my temper. I was furious. Was he serious?
It seemed like the appropriate moment to mention his engagement to the other girl. How could he be so outrageous?How could he come there?
When I told him that no matter what I had done, I was not interested in meeting engaged men, he was shocked once more. He was aghast. He hadn’t thought I knew, which of course was a silly notion since I had managed to find out a lot of things about him. His engagement was a major thing to miss. I couldn’t fail to be informed about it.
I was angry with him as he was angry with me.
But he wanted us to meet, whatsoever. He overcame the first shock easily, and continued not to mention his fiancee, although everything was about her. He tried to convince me that it was not bad if we meet.
I didn’t yield to his arguments.
He was upset.
My memories from the next few hours are vague and unclear. I felt relief that I had escaped this meeting, but I also felt as if a train-or maybe two-had run over me. I remember we talked later, and we quarrelled.
I was mad at him, because he didn’t seem to realize, to understand the reasons that made me change my mind.
He stated that if we couldn’t meet, we couldn’t go on talking on the phone anymore.
He wouldn’t accept this situation anymore.
That was ok with me, and I let him know, but I am afraid I was a little too harsh on him.
And I believed that was the last time we spoke.
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