Mr. Picture Perfect

Going back to where you have left of

Over the summer after graduation, my brother told me that someone named Jun called our house.  He was looking for a person named Aileen.  My brother told the caller that there was no Aileen there.   It was long been forgotten, the name I used before.  Practically, the name doesn’t exist anymore.  So to say I didn’t believe he was the one who called me.  How I wished I answered the phone when he finally contacted me, somehow. 

I didn’t dare call him.

I was not sure why I didn’t think of giving him a call.  Maybe I wanted him to call me again.  I wanted to make sure it was he.  The line of the phone number I gave to him was cut off.  There was even a time that a friend told me that they called it off.  After less than two years he and his girlfriend split up.  It didn’t matter to me anymore.  I was happy with my life.

Then someone saw Jun with another girl.  It only means he had a girlfriend after that.  Just recently news came that he made a girl pregnant.  Unconfirmed news, that is.  So to speak, I became curious again.  For a while then lay off.

Two years after when I was already working, I was cleaning my room when I accidentally saw an address book.  I scanned it and right there and then I saw his phone number.  I dialed it and boom!  He was the one who answered it.  I wasn’t ready for another conversation with him so I hung up.

I met another guy on the same month.  I was about to leave the house when my sister told me that my aunt saw Jun in the university.  Ha ha!  I still couldn’t escape the past up until now.  Four years had gone after I saw what I needed to see.  Now his memories are haunting me.  Like I couldn’t get over and done it with him. A big question bubbles to my head, “WHY?”

Up to this very moment I haven’t got any clue as to why I’d been drooling over him for a long time. It happened.  Wasn’t it enough?  The happy memories, the tears, the pains, the realization and the acceptance of truth came.  Then why I am back to where I stood from, again?  A part of me wants to go back and finish the story I left behind.  Another part wants to move on and forget about the past.

I somehow felt that our story doesn’t have an ending yet.  Our worlds maybe interconnected.  To sum all the coincidence I enumerated, there’s still a maybe with every line.  I have to do my part.  I couldn’t think of a way to start all over again.  I know I couldn’t do it once more.  But who’s to say?  Nobody knows, right?  Unless, I make a move, just as Aries had reminded me.  Maybe he has done his part.  He called me didn’t, he? 

But to top it all, what happened before had its own reason.  And maybe the reason behind was that we were not meant to be together.  A chance passed before us and we let it slipped away.  Somehow, the ‘what if’s’ and ‘could have been’ and ‘should have been’ clings to my mind.  Can I just forget all that happened and start from scratch?  But how?

Even if I want to I don’t have the courage to do it.

Even if I have the courage I turn my back once I’m there.

I simply couldn’t do it.

I can’t.

I won’t.

Or I might.

I don’t know.  Tell me an easier way; I’ll start there.

But from now, I’ll think for it a hundred times before I do it.

And I had done it!

I called him one Monday night of August 2002.

It was not a very good conversation.

Why?  He doesn’t remember any Aileen, Apple or Jay.

He asked me why I called.

I just laughed or sort of nothing to say because I wasn’t prepared for the situation.

Then we hung up.

I was crashed for the fourth time.

That was the last phone call he would ever receive from me.

Somehow, I felt I was denied.

Denied, of the existence of Aileen.  Denied of the memories I mostly cherished about him. Denied, from every possibility of coming back.  Denied, of the one true love I thought I had.  Denied, of the four years I had been haunted by the ghost of the past.

What did I feel?

I said to myself, after hanging up the phone, to cry.  It’s just that no tears came running down my cheeks.  They must have dried.  I actually felt nothing but relieved in a way.  I don’t know. I wanted to thank myself for doing it.  It was a brave thing to do.  At least, I passed the test.  I don’t have to wait for him anymore.  A realization came to me that he was not for me before he was not for me today.  For tomorrow, there’d be no hoping for it again.  I knew I’d stop from today.  The future would bring what is rightfully mine and somehow I knew it would not be Jun.

I was on the verge of the word acceptance. 

That was the only choice given to me.

He would always be my “Mr. Picture Perfect.”

Sometimes I thought of why did I address him as Mr. Picture Perfect?

Two things.

It’s because I dedicated a song for him entitled ‘Picture of You by Boyzone.’

And a perfect picture of him is the one thing embedded in my mind, in my heart and in my soul.    Just like the picture I had of him, the yearbook photo of him.

And I’m thankful he passed by my way.  He made me love.   He made me human.   He made me the unknown.  That was all that matters.

Maybe… and just maybe there were no coincidences.  Everything happens with a reason.