She is unassumingly intoxicating–the kind of girl that charms your heart into submission without effort nor intent. And that is precisely what she did with mine one fine evening.
We talked; we danced; we held hands. All innocent in retrospect, but that point was moot by the time I realized it. From the moment I dropped her off at her place in the wee hours of the morning, to the minute I woke up at around noon hours later, my alcohol-fueled brain already fired off premature and misguided synapses of affection to the neurons within my impressionable psyche.
The heroine in this tale is in her mid-twenties, spirited and sociable. I, on the other hand, am inopportunely at the tailend of my thirties, seasoned and solitary. While the May-to-December angle is a convenient, more palatable and face-saving rationalization to convince my fragile ego that nothing will come of this, I know the real deal breaker. The signs are crystal clear; she just does not harbor the same feelings for me as I do for her.
“to me, you’re strange and you’re beautiful,
you’d be so perfect with me but you just can’t see
you turn every head but you don’t see me …”
Despite this rueful realization, the nascent feeling remains resilient. I have not been able to snuff it out with a dousing of vodka cocktails for that only intensifies the flame. Neither am I able to bury it deep in my unconscious for it just manages to creep back up with more verve. Fighting it is a lost cause, so I concede. I know what I have to do, as I have done it before.
I wait it out.
“sometimes, the last thing you want comes in first,
sometimes, the first thing you want never comes, and I know, the waiting is all you can do … sometimes”- strange and beautiful by aqualung
Sooner or later, time will reveal there’s an expiration date for this infatuation. Unreciprocated, it will eventually turn into a disposable emotion–one to be discarded for its silly uselessness. When that time comes I shall be free again. Free to fall for more romanticized follies. Then the cycle begins anew.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
