Not YOUR CiNDERELLA

ONE LOVE- - -  one LIFETIME

In the seventeenth summer of my life I fell in love for the first time (^^)

Naturally, I had no idea what I was getting into. Youth, for all its freshness and vigor, does not have the wisdom of past experiences. And so it was that I was very ill-equipped when Cupid's arrows first struck. I still had fairy-tale notions of love:

BOY LIKES GIRL, GIRL LIKES BOY, BOY AND GIRL PLEDGE UNDYING LOVE FOR EACH OTHER, AND THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. (@.@ such an epic fail! tss >.<)

I only had to find my Prince Charming, and everything would be smooth sailing. i was young and invincible. No sadness could touch me, especially in the arena of romance.

To young people finding themselves drawn to someone for the first time, everything is wonderful and new. I once read that love is like God's finger on your shoulder. Every beautiful thing in the world feels like it was made solely for your enjoyment, like a gift chosen with only you in mind. Perhaps the greatest of all these gifts is the sound of your heart catching in your throat at the sight of a boy smiling at you as though you, too, were  a gift he cannot quite thank God enough for.

When I look back at the days when I was all giddy with the first discovery of love, I find that the grass was greener... The splendor of creation, the marvel of life. - - -

my Prince had come on his white charger, to rescue me from my ordinary, solitary existences. Suddenly, I had someone to hold my hand. It was bliss. It was ecstasy. I was madly, deeply, truly in love.

I thought my happiness was without end. I thought that since we had naturally gravitated toward each other, it would be a simple thing to get toward each other, it would be a simple thing to get together and be sweethearts until our hearts gave out in our golden years. Of natural causes, not of exhaustion, like I don't feel like loving him anymore.

Where did it go?? I DON'T KONW! Maybe it was beautiful to last. Maybe the deities who bestowed this wondrous gift on me decided they could not extend their generosity any further. MAYBE IT WASN'T LOVE AFTER ALL. Maybe it was werely a sweet but insignificant friendship, that in my remantic delusion I had exaggerated into a grand love affair. Months of sleepless nights, countless tears and endless soul searching have given me no answers.

But if it wasn't love, what could it possibly have been?? What was it that made me feel his presence like no other, day after day. He would walk in to room and my attention would immediately be riveted to him, like an oarsman in the dead of night fixing his eyes on a lighthouse miles and miles away.He would smile at me and I could melt quicker, quicker than you could say quickmelt. He would narrate some anecdote, and I would recite it from my memory many months after everyone else had forgotten it.

Even to this day that I successfully convinced myself and unsuccessfully convinced my friends that I have fallen out of love with him, I cannot help but cast one last glance in his direction every time he says goodbye and starts to walk away to an existence entirely separate from my own. I keep my eyes on him until the last hair on his head is out of sight, trying to preserve every datail of his appearence in my memory until the time I will see him again.

I loved his SMILE most of all. I remember how he used to smile at me when we'd passmeach other in the school corridors. Reflexively I'd smile back, grinning like silly, my meager dimples stretched up to my ears, my face dangerously close to splitting.

He gave me the greatest happiness as weel as the greatest sadness of my young life. The times when he made me feel most loved will always be like commemorative gold coins in mint condition in my mind. When you hear your heart beat union with another even for the most fleeting moment, that's one moment you will never forget.

I fell apart when it finally became clear that we weren't getting anywhere, at least not together that our great love affair was only being carried on in my imagination. LOVE IS A WOMAN'S EXISTENCE, and mine became totally disordered. I cannot do anything but think of him. I cannot imgine it now, but there was a time when my every thought was of him. I would be praying and almost begging "Please God, I love him. Please let him love me again."

Months later I discovered different way to took out my frustrations. I write, anything thats comes to my mind.. I play outdoors games like volleyball and tennis. I took out my frustration on the hapless, fuzzy, yellow balls. In no time at all I had an excellent serve =)

Now I realize that this was a great disservice to myself. In my great, TRAGIC LOVE for THIS person I had forgotten to LOVE MYSELF! and became a victim of my own neglect. My drama was wasting away for a boy I had lost, I guess.

Through it all I loved him very much. I loved him so much that, as the cliche goes, I could not deny him his happiness. I he was happier with someone else, so be it. Though it sometimes felt like I had wound in my heart, it didn't matter that he didn't love me in return, I loved him anyway. When he'd wonder if there was a girl out there for him, I could scarcely stop myself from screaming, "Here I am, no need to go far!" Maybe I could not have his love, but I AT LEAST COULD HAVE HIS FRIENDSHIP. =l

Call it STUPIDITY, call it INSANITY, call it OBSESSION, call it INFATUATION, call it whatever you want. IT WAS LOVE , sweet bittersweet love. In my years of loving one boy with all my heart could hold. I know it was not his fault that I was so unhappy for so long, it was simply my misfortune, my cross to carry. In spite of everything, I am a better person, and I will forever be indebted to him for teaching me how it is to love. Never mind that his teaching was done mostly in abstensia.

Having survived from one heartbreak has not lessened my fear of going through another. Thus I envy people who can plunge head-long into a relationshis after but just some tentative attempts at getting to know another person. I envy people who can meet strangers and shortly afterward declare that they were meant for each other. I envy those who are not afraid to go after their happiness and damn the consequences. I envy people who can go from conquest to conquest without feeling diminished by it.

I can never be like them. I don't think like them. Once you've tasted manna from heaven, why bother with bread from the baker? Nothing compares with it.

**THANK YOU FOR READING =)