Until the day I turned 18, I had always equated love as a gooey romantic feeling. I though of it as something that belonged only to the movies-- to the handsome pair with smoky eyes and whistle-bait shapes. Yup, the curvy and the brawn. Blame it on the countless movies that assaulted my imagination and twisted my world view -- Ready for love, 14 going steady, Bagets. My romance with romanticism even sank deeper when at 13, I started devouring pocketbooks that had protagonists twice my age and prince charmings not younger than 30. My preoccupation with matters of the heart in the dead of the night thus made me impatient to grow up fast and triggered my imagination to run wild....
While the rest of the family were off to dreamland, I was off daydreaming and replaying in my head romantic fantasies I watched or read, this time with me as the heroine-- melting in the undying love of a whale of a hunk who looked exactly like Miles O' Keefe (He was the one who played Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian in the 80s---well-chiseled nose, square jaws, hard rock chest). Racing heart, kilig (swooning), staring blankly at a ceiling and smiling like crazy for no apparent reason, I was entangled in my world of rainbows..only that I basked in its enchantment when the lights were dimmed. Ohh, the madness of imagining what "love" was like.
Driven and competitive in school, I resolved though not to get emotionally involved with infantile boys who occasionally got smitten with me. I had a different standard of what my man ought to be and the ones I bumped into in reality were wanting both physically and intellectually. Poor things. How could they ever match up with the perfect man of my dreams-- one that came from the flawless, silver-lined pen of Penny Jordan and Anne Mather? One that had the combined hunkiness of David Hasselhoff (during his Baywatch stint) and Tom Cruise (in his Top Gun form), the cuteness of Ralph Macchio, the tenderness and passion of Keanu Reeves in the movie A Walk in the Clouds, the depth and intellect of Morgan Freeman and the sense of humor of Jackie Chan?
Being bombarded with the 80s love songs hitting the airwaves didn't help either to stabilize my somewhat eskewed notion of love. At most, songs like Ocean Deep, Changes in my Life, Foolish Heart and Lovers Moon made jelly beans out of me and oftentimes led me to my starry world of magical kisses, flying horses, and knights and damsels of unending bliss.
By the time I reached 16, I had already "known" what love meant-- straight from the pages of MIlls and Boon. It was simply an emotional high, a physiological reaction to someone who embodied the qualities of Mr. Dreamboy. Foolish me. I soon realized that what you exposed yourself would shape or influence you. I began to be shaped by the world I was in, by the stuff I read, movies I watched and friends I hang out with. I glorified the aesthetics -- that feel good, "electric" feeling over skin-deep attractivess. Eventually, my fixation with romantic feelings made me a bunch of nerves. I became too emotionally sensitive--like a high-strung chord waiting to snap out.
Enter My Knights
There were three. One was a highschool throb and two were college crushes.
I was in third year highschool when a tall, brown-eyed, fair-skinned guy I secretly admired (uh,uh. okay, I swooned over) winked at me at high noon while the sun punished bitterly. It could have been my overly active imagination giving me away. Maybe he just squinted -- a normal reaction to the sun's glare, and I just happened to look at his face. But my fifteen-year old heart interpreted it otherwise. Heart somersaulting, I even had to look back to make sure there was no one behind me to whom that heart-melting "wink" was directed. Nada. I was walking alone. I was dead certain it was my beauty, and mine alone that captivated him. Gosh, I felt my knees wobble. How could such a cutie take notice of a kinky-haired, chocolate-skinned beanpole when more poised and queenly lookers probably swooned over him? Hah, Mr. sunshine’s torturous rays worked in my favor.
