Saturday, August 12, 2006


"Can this be truly it?": the sequel to 'Mengingati kisah silam...'

Assalamualaikum wrh. wbt.

I was browsing through my old files, trying to clear them out and clean my hard disk as I was reading my Management text by Prof Danny Samson (management consultant to Petronas, and thus, highly frequent flier to Malaysia - I am very jealous) and making notes on Operations Management AND listening to Bilal Philip's lecture on Marriage in Islam (I needed a light topic to listen to as I worked --> asif, Kak Aini :)).

When I came across this (scroll a little lower. Right).

I take it that some people will be very glad to read the continuation to this here post.

Go ahead:

*

Can this be truly it?

When your heart says “please?” and your mind steadfastly says “no”, and the rest of you is waiting for the two to make up their minds so you can actually move in his presence? Can that truly be the deciding point for you to know that once again, you have fallen down the old, winding rabbit hole, and that looking out into ordinary sunshine will be the most difficult thing you may ever perceive?

Questions upon questions lead you nowhere, because all you want is to get there. And you become so self-absorbed in him and you that selfish guilt is a constant companion. That may be truly the turning point for you.

And I should know? No, not really. Because I don’t, and I somehow doubt that I will ever achieve that state of delirium at the sight of a single person.

But then again, there he is. He smiles, and the world seems right. And he laughs, and the world is perfect. But he doesn’t look your way, and you mope the rest of the day. Other than the fact that it rhymes, nothing quite appeals to you anymore.

So maybe I know a thing or two about it.

Crushes are dangerous things. They’re particularly dangerous when you don’t know where they will lead. At least with stories, you know that they will remain inside, all for the shaping of your dreams in their made-up little lives. But reality – it’s stark-true. It’s not make-believe. It hurts and bleeds, and you hurt and bleed with it.

So you don’t want to risk anything. You want to play safe, and hide, and act nonchalant, when you actually feel like jumping up and down from the walls, swinging on your head until you fall and hurt your crown, and maybe then you’ll wake up.

Before that, everything else is pointless. Or so you think.

Carpe diem. Seize the day. Seize the moment – the opportunity that you don’t even expect; that you never even felt was right. Carpe this and carpe that.

Those are easy words to say, but hard to follow.

And I should know?

Well, yes.

Listen carefully. This is my story. Our story, actually. But when you are as deep in as I was, any story that you can even claim partially for yourself quickly becomes yours, and yours alone. A reason I hated feeling like this was because it made me feel weak and emotional, selfish and helpless. Like what I own is not mine anymore.

This is my story.


*

He wasn’t the type you would fall for at first sight. Surely, he grabs your attention, and most definitely your sight, and holds it for more than the allotted half-second, when you first come across him. Then he begins to do things that cannot remain unignorable at any rate, and you dismiss him as another quirky person with a penchant for high doses of caffeine at the earliest hour of the morning.

At least, that was my perception of him.

He was infamous in my books for his absurd logic and flagrant flaunting of all laws, be it grammatical or legislative. He lived for the moment, for the second, for the instant. And maybe that’s what drew me to him. I started spending more time with him, and we spent many minutes chatting and discussing things of no particular importance. But all that changed when I finally figured out, that in between comparing everything from favourite cartoons to life principles, I had fallen for him.

Everybody says that there is always a specific moment when you know. You never know when the agonizing torture happens, but the realization that it has dawns on you in a very momentous second. Life spins for a while around you, almost whirling like a pool of rain at the bottom of a lake, and when it settles down, you are left with an almost proud epiphany that at that moment, you have changed. Regardless, you will never be the same again. At that point in time, you don’t know whether to rejoice or cry. Because you don’t know how all this will end. The suspense, and the fervour is probably what drives all teenaged crushes.

So now you start acting weird around him. Your heart and soul are split into two – wanting him to know, and wanting to burrow deep down within your emotional quandary and hibernate until it’s gone. Being realistic, of course, you face him, each and every day. Each and every day. It’s a struggle. Your attempts at keeping cool are sniffed out by your prying, yet well-meaning friends. They intervene with your reluctant permission. Most times they don’t intervene at all, because they know better than you.

They knew that it wasn’t going to work.

Many secrets were kept hidden from me. He didn’t like me. He didn’t care. Not the way I did; maybe not at all. When the truth struck out, I felt victimised. I felt that he was cruel, unreasonable, had no heart. My voice of reason dictated how I moved and acted around him. But my heart and mind?

They were out of control.

Keeping in mind, this is our story. Likely you have felt this too: When people talk, every word, syllable, never mind sentence, reminds you of something he has said. Disregarding the fact that most all human beings you know communicate using the same vocab and the same language, you still regard this as a sign that your heart will never heal. You wallow in songs of those tirelessly in love. They relate to you; they feel the pain you’re suffering through. They’ll help you through. You cry yourself to sleep sometimes. Some nights, you dream of him. When that arduous song that reminds you of him plays on the air, your brain stops thinking, it seems. Your heart sways. Your mind slowly drifts apart. Your soul relishes in the oft-glorified pain.

You tell yourself: “This is what Love is.”

*

But it’s not. That’s not what love is at all. Love is acceptance, and patience, and kindness, and graciousness, and faith. Faith, that all you endure together is something that will add to the sweetness of the ecstasy that we humans label so plainly as ‘love’.

We tend to forget that the greatest Love we have received is in our creation. That God had thought to let us experience this rich life, when He could so easily deprive us of it. That we have found the will to live. That we are given treasure upon treasure of memories and mementoes of happiness. That we are given trials that test our will and build us into stronger souls.

Are these not all tokens of Love?

It’s hard now for me to imagine falling in love with another human being. I have found that crushes were something I had entrapped and enclosed myself into. I had practically pushed myself under the sand by repeatedly reinforcing the flattered fancy of my own ego that I had mistaken for love. And for what?

Pain? Emotional overhaul? Mental anguish?

Surely I deserved better. And I do.

And now I have found that I already owned that greater Love. It was already within my grasp. I had just never looked at it closely, or for very long.

But it was there all along.

Wallahu'alam bissawab.

Wassalamualaikum.

this has been a rant by Syazwina Saw at 11:31 pm

1 comments