In a sense, I find it fascinating how different but similar humanity is. We all have different tastes, different views, different preferences… But when that significant other arouses our instant attention, the feeling of love is the same for every person. Whether to a family member or to a partner, to an animal or to a friend, unconditional love is a powerful thing.
What is it exactly? Some say it’s looking past the flaws of a person, seeing them for who they truly are and desire to be. Others say it’s the will to nurture and care about a person who deserves it––or who shares that love with you. No one person shows love in the same process. Some may show it by saying as much, and some may show it through their actions.
But love can be complicated at times. An abstract human trait such as love cannot be measured, it cannot be proven, and it cannot be certain. A man cannot simply see into the mind of a woman to see if she truly feels unconditional love towards the person who feels just the same. Only by her external beauty can he judge.
But in such relationships, it’s as though you could sense the compassion and solicitude burning brightly within the beloved, and the beloved could sense it within you.
Even love as a word knows no bounds, as every time I think deeply about its meaning, it brings me back to a day when I never fully knew what love truly meant.
A few years back, I met someone. A friend of mine. She wasn’t a particularly perfect girl––with estranged emotions that got the better of her at times, causing this sense of unpredictability about how she was feeling at any given moment.
I hardly felt anything for her at first, but I grew to enjoy my time with her as we began talking every now and again. It only took days before we would talk so often that others questioned the validity of our friendship.
Looking back, those early bonding stages created my most fondest of memories. I still remember the sensation of solace I felt as we talked and laughed for hours; minutes would turn into seconds as we both meandered endlessly on the peaceful sidewalk, with rays of sunlight gleaming down at the both of us, as if the environment was seemingly matching our jovial mood.
We would even come visit each other on the weekends, in which I would greet her gleefully at the door and lead her into my room, where we would spend an uncountable amount of time playfully teasing one another and caressing each other’s hair in affection.
Each time moments like these happened, I could feel a great sense of awe and joy… a great sense of love.
But sometimes, the beloved may not reciprocate the same feelings. They may be playing with our minds like a cat and a toy on a stick, luring us into a state of comfort, until we inevitably realize that they didn’t requite our feelings.
In select moments, it’s as if heartbreak feels worse for the heartbreaker than for the heartbroken, a myriad of emotions which cloud the better judgment of the pursued. The one who just lost a great friend. Even the best one. The pursuer seems to have forgotten those days, having learned from their mistakes and moving on to better people, as the pursued still carries an overwhelming sense of dread to have not reciprocated that same love.
If I had been the pursued, it wouldn’t be my fault, would it not? No one can choose who to love and who not to love. And I, for a reason I cannot understand, find myself guilty of it.
For her, all I felt was just a dark void within my heart, unaware that hers was filled with intense infatuation. And as I would stare into her eyes and she’d stare into mine, we would see two different people. I would see one of a caring friend, a compassionate girl, and a determined companion. She would see one of a lover; a funny, friendly guy, one who would always stay by her side, hand-in-hand. The first person she would go to when her first desire would be to love.
And it seemed that love was strong enough to induce her to reveal it to me. That day, I would never forget.
I recall the first time that she told me about her feelings towards me. The words she spoke made the darkness in my heart get bigger, as I found myself guilty of being forced to play the pursued. I didn’t want to mess with her feelings; I didn’t want to lie to her. But I also didn’t want to be the one to reject. I wanted to be the person who she always saw in me, the person who she loved dearly. The person who loved her just as much.
I felt like I was fighting with my conspicuous emotions, which were continuously screaming in my mind, each side telling me what to say and do. Although, that feeling was always beaten by my will to cease from lying. So, I said it.
It was a divided conversation. It was undeniably sad, but we decided to stay as friends.
Fast forward a little while. We are just friends now. We say our typical greetings and goodbyes, repeat our usual awkward laughs, and look at each other with the same dull expressions every now and then, as we both subconsciously know that the lack of reciprocation killed our relationship.
These moments, I ponder. “Maybe I did love her.” “Maybe I did make a mistake.” At the start, I remember those times when we would lay together on the comfy sofa, eating popcorn and watching movies together, as she rested her head on my shoulder, laid her sleepy cat on my right leg, and embraced me in the darkness of the living room, with the only things illuminating us being the television, the bright candles, and her glimmering smile which periodically showed its shine as we stared at each other wondrously––like gazing at the stars in the night sky. My head laid on hers, and as I occasionally lifted it, I could see her tiny hairs still sticking onto my raising cheek, a sign of just how long we had been in that position for.
I never forgot the feeling of bliss I had at that moment. It was like I could see into the mind of hers, as if I knew there was this seemingly unconditional love that she was radiating in great amounts. A sense of giddiness we had never felt before fogged our heads with endless thoughts. We never said anything else that day. We simply fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Other days, she would take me to stores. Not to buy anything, but just for us to be together, as we walked around and pretended to look at cute apparel even though the only thing on our minds was each other. Or when she would take me to get ice cream, and we would always instinctively grab the same flavor as if we were telepathically connected. Whipped cream-topped chocolate and vanilla ice cream would drip down through our fingers and onto the hands of the other, who would catch the trickle of sugar just before it hit the floor, wiping it teasingly on the other’s face.
I only choose to remember those moments. They are special memories in my life, memories that will dejectedly stay as such.
But now, we are just strangers. We don’t hug each other as we pass by. We don’t hold hands as we notice each other and smile. We don’t gaze at each other for minutes at a time. We’re just memories to each other. The girl I see now is so jumbled up in my mind she doesn’t even seem like a person; just a regret with a body, a husk of the person she once was, a husk of the people we once were.
Whenever I see her, it’s like a reality check kicks in. A reality that I just lost the person who I thought I hadn’t desired to be with, until I look back on our moments together, and I subsequently think otherwise. She wasn’t any more of a friend than she was a thought; and perhaps that’s where the love came from. I didn’t love her, I loved the thought of her. It stings, really, to not be able to love someone you want to love.
In bed, I begin to think about what would have happened if I lied, if I said that I loved her when I didn’t. At least that would be better than losing a poor soul, a friend, who thought of you and even expected you to be the one she would live her life with. Or would that have been inferior?
Not once did she think I didn’t love her back. Not once did I think she didn’t love me back. How unfortunate it seems that the latter was the only correct one.
Now I wonder if this is how it feels to be the “heartbroken pursued,” The one who unintentionally lured his friend into a false state of comfort, a comfort he had once feared would happen to himself—and he felt ashamed of it, when that comfort inevitably broke apart after he told her his true feelings.
It seems I say things like that in the third person, to use “him” as an example of who not to be, as if I’m trying to maintain any semblance of dignity, and to pretend that I’m talking about the person who I really am—the person who I don’t want to be.
After reflection, I’ve come to terms that the one who pursued me is now the one who left me. And I left her too, but the regret of rejection followed suit. And I carry that looming regret everywhere I go, seemingly getting heavier and heavier every time I see her again. It gets so heavy sometimes it’s as though I’m carrying a skyscraper on my back, pushing me back down onto the floor and humbling me any time it can––even at home, even when I’m alone.
Now, she is less than a stranger. We never say our typical greetings and goodbyes. We never repeat our awkward laughs anymore. We never even look at each other, whether intentionally or unintentionally. We’re just endlessly stuck in each other’s peripheral, like a ghost that haunts you.
And that feeling constantly makes me wish that we had never met in the first place. Because at least back then, I didn’t think of her as much. And at moments, not at all. She was simply one of the many people I saw walking past me on the roadside or in the hallways, most of whom left my mind quickly. At a basis, she was just a blur in the hundreds of faces that left my subconscious, just as fast as they entered.
But when I see her now, she seems to never leave my subconscious anymore, as I find myself constantly replaying the days in my mind when things with her and I were still, for a lack of a better word, healthy. And I’m sure she does it too.
It’s not like we left in bad relations. She’s still my friend. I’m still her friend.
It’s just not the “friendship” that we want it to be.
However, it feels like I’ve lost a person I would’ve liked to become real friends with. A funny, compassionate, and caring friend, who would follow me through life every step of the way, in which love would never become an obstacle. But even if we did talk once more, to patch up the wounds we’ve caused, it still wouldn’t be the same. Thoughts of the present and the past would be clashing, as the thoughts of the present are pushing us to get back into good relations, but the thoughts of the past can’t let go of the memory that is… the moment we fell apart.
As I see her improving, talking and laughing with friends, hanging out with other potential partners, and overall meeting new people, I don’t become envious of them. Instead, I just try and hope that they don’t suffer the same fate I did, because I believe that is the fate that only the guilty should bear.
Life continues. “My best friend” is now simply “her,” and I call her that to everyone I know because it seems they automatically understand who I’m referring to. They know that it hurts me to say her name, and it really does. Saying it reminds me that she was somebody I once knew. The person who I told, “Maybe, it’s better if we stay as friends.”
At this point, it feels as though I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t. But my sleep gets interrupted by the thought of her more nights than I want to think have gotten. Every time I wake up in the morning, my first instinct is to message her––and then I have to remind myself all over again that it’s completely and utterly over.
It’s just hard to think that I could’ve stayed with her if I said something different. It grew to a point where I yearned for the moment I could just drop down in front of her and confess, to see her as the happiest girl in the whole world; a grin as giant as the moon and as bright as the sun, hands covering her wide-open mouth, as she would run towards me and hug me as tightly as she possibly could.
But I don’t understand why I’m beating myself up so much about it. Not loving her wasn’t a choice. My feelings were based on chance––outside factors, which were completely out of my control.
Though I guess that’s what makes it hard to think about. The fact that I lost my best friend because of chance. An abstract idea as invisible and obscure as labels. And it’s making me realize that I haven’t truly moved on from her. Moving on is harder when love is stronger, but were we truly at our strongest?
It’s as though we’re part of a study—a study on the concept of a pursued and a pursuer, and how one doesn’t love the other, but they want to love them simply from a lack of carelessness, or perhaps as a form of escapism to release themselves from regret. The reason I still think about her so much is, in reality, to cope with this feeling of conception, and I know that I’ll do the same the hundreds of more nights that she stays frozen in the past.
Every moment of every day, I begin to question my real feelings when I consider the small things, like how my heart rate has seemed suspiciously slower ever since she wasn’t there to raise it. It’s not like I try not to think about those things. I know it’s unhealthy.
This stain in my life isn’t temporary––it’s forever, and I will have to either live with my regrets or learn to endure them, because they won’t be going away until I leave this world for good. In distressing times like these, sanity is something you have to work for; it becomes an achievement that you reach by isolating yourself from regret to live in the present anew, with a clear vision that isn’t clouded by unnecessary thoughts. Because in actual fact, regrets form the basis of unnecessary thoughts. To regret something is useless, as it does nothing but plague your mind over an event you are unable to change.
Although I and many other people understand the great effect that regret has on mental health, it can still find ways to seep into anyone’s mind at any moment—at times, it’s merely inescapable.
Regret is unspeakably powerful. And I know that the most.
…Later in life, when I get into a relationship with another person, I will look back on her in irrelevancy. And I’ll eventually understand that our love for each other didn’t matter all that much. But I can’t help but remember her sometimes.
I indirectly go through all the “what-if’s” in my head, thinking of the perfect scenario that will never happen. But my efforts have faults—we have to abide by the realities of the world, one of those realities being that we simply cannot go back in time and change our mistakes. We can only learn from them.
I always think that there may be a sliver of a chance we could become friends again. Maybe more than that. But as I look up at the sky, regretting what I said to her, I hold my breath for as long as I can, reimagining the moments when I felt speechless every time I gazed at her pearly-white smile—a smile which now seems permanently closed.
Maybe our love had conditions.