Unchained Melody

Unchained Melody

By Joanna Patris C. Berdin

         I believed that having the genuine affection to someone is enough to call it love. I believed love can be felt alone; it needs not to be reciprocated. For one thing, love happens in all sort of instances whether favourable or not.

         I laid my back restlessly on the cold wide cement while I allowed my thoughts to progress. Not long enough, I heard manly voices laughing and chatting coming from the corridor which grew louder as they eventually got closer. I paused. I listened carefully. A sudden chill developed throughout my body causing me to move a little. I listened closely once again and this time I sharpened my senses. That voice. Yes. I knew that voice, of course. It rings bell to my ears whenever it's around. The voice was his. I was sure it was my love's alluring voice.

As the voices began to grow pale, I abruptly jumped off from my place, hoping to see him even for the last remaining seconds. Moving slowly, I had pushed my head before the wall. I patiently waited. I felt my eyes were swelling pushing them too hard. Finally, I could see him just the right angle I wished it to. And so, there he was wearing the sweetest dissipating smile, teeth exposed. I had never seen so mystical than it. My heart chuckled. I had gone nuts.

Time had elapsed but the feeling lingered for quite longer. I barely breathed as I savored every bits of my emotions. It was warm deep within and I could taste its sweet chocolate flavor.

I was passionately watching him as his presence gradually abandoned my sight. I couldn't help smiling so dearly.  I was very happy and lucky to see him.

"Thank you for making my day complete", I whispered. I felt the zing.

While I was so overwhelmed with my emotions, I didn't realize he turned his head behind. Momentarily, I came to my senses. He was already looking toward my direction. My eyes protruded. By then, I had, as fast as I possibly could, withdrawn my sight. I moved back. Lub dub lub dub lub dub lub dub dub lub dub lub lub dub dub lub dub...my heart went shouting. Lub dub lub dub lub dub lub dub dub lub dub lub lub dub dub lub dub. Goosebumps suddenly occupied my entire skin. I was terrified there then. Could he possibly hear the sound? Did he hear the pounding of my yearning heart? The sound had gone even louder, I was afraid he might have heard it as well.

Hence, for the last three minutes, I didn't move a muscle. "Did I get noticed?" the question that had stuffed my mind for the last minutes I had been playing dead. "Did he notice me?" I asked myself once more.

My knees were trembling so badly that I had to enforce power to prevent them from incessantly moving. I tried to hold them so close to each other with my frozen hands. I bit my lips trying to divert the feeling. It worked yet it only took a while. I was troubled. "Why on earth am I hiding myself behind this wall?" I asked in doubt.

A love from a boy is something I had been yearning to enjoy with. The warmth is exquisitely different, I guess. I thought of begging, but the courage was none. For 3 years I had been keeping it to myself. I had been struggling to carry out the feeling without the person's knowledge about it. Does he really need to know? I am in love but I doubt if it's the kind that is real, if it's the kind that would stop me form needing. I had thought, sometimes, that I might have misinterpreted my emotions with love. But, a part of me disproved. "You are in love!" as it goes.

Indeed, love is not love with the absence of intricacies. Love is entangled with problems and sacrifices. It is an ecstatic feeling which is worthwhile when it is challenged. It is only when it encompasses every trials that we are able to call it love, a true one. But, what if you have the feeling, yet never the person? What if it's unrequited? Can we still call it love?

We are all entitled of our own opinions and I declare mine now. Love always retains its essence retaliated or not. There is no such rule that it has to be a two-way emotion. I am in love, reciprocated or not. This tingling sensation I have within is the thing I called love. I call it love. I know this is love. The moment I had felt my first zing, I know for a fact I am in love. The moment I saw him at the Guidance Office where I felt butterflies in my stomach for the first time, I am certain I am in love. The moment I wished to jump off from a 4 storey building because we passed by each other, I know I am totally in love. The moment I first had his picture as my phone's wallpaper, I know I am in love. The moment I didn't enter one of the school's offices because I got paralyzed to see him inside, I know I am in love. The moment I had to turn my eyes away pretending not to see him coming, I know I am in love. And the moment I wrote his name on my test answer sheet, I know I am in love. Having the sort of feeling makes me want to scream to the peak of my lungs how much I love this guy: "I love you! Can you hear that?!"

On the othe hand, I don't think to love is to beg for one in return. There must be no assumptions set because they only give all the sort of aches to the ones who have felt it. To love is to expect nothing in return. Love is boundless. It has no certain guidelines to take in order to accumulate it. It comes naturally and unexpectedly as it possibly could. It comes when you least expect it, certainly. Mine has come but I found no refuge for it. I found it all to myself yet I don't intend to give it away. Perhaps, because I have felt it for the right person but not in the right circumstance.

I was at the Guidance Office when I first met the guy who had made me celebrate Christmas amidst the month of May. The 4 corners were filled, as if, with beautiful and colourful illuminating fireworks that had lightened up my mood so instantly. That day was the onset of my happy fairy-tale-like thoughts. He seemed to be Santa's gift for me. I had loved it.

He had a slender body that might give you an idea he had been suffering from a stage 4 tuberculosis. He was really thin back then, little I'd mattered. His needle-edge hair completely brought me in awe. It took me almost a hundred giving an eye to it. How long did it take him to the c.r. to fix that? I just wondered. Apparently, he was still young at that time; his rosy cheeks and sheepish actions could assert. We were, actually, of the same age. I was still 16 and so he was. He looked a bit younger rather his age could tell. Probably, his bright smiling eyes made him looked like that, with which I couldn't resist from glancing at. Did I get caught? Once, twice, several times, I guess.

Yeah, our eyes had met. I know right. It felt amazing. We had looked into each other's eyes which had jumped my pulse furiously and boiled my blood under 100 degrees and a half. I looked, eventually, as if I had bathed myself with red paint. That might had given him the absurdity to smile ear-to-ear. It had me reddened even more; hence he left me no choice but to give him that stop-the-mockery-or-you'll-end-up-a-week-vacation-in-the-hospital stare. What was that for? Hmm, after all, I'm a girl, so I had to appear like a young untameable virgin to his eyes. Yet, sooner I had realized I should've not done that. I had set the boundary between us.

Thereafter, I began to create illusive thoughts--about me and him, together. I had drawn in mind that he would fetch me out after my last class in the morning for him to walk me home while he would lift his hand to get my bag and carry it for me instead. Or we would be at the amusement park holding our hands so sweetly swinging them back and forth that we would be overwhelmed with so much joy  we could no longer notice that the night was about to embark. You see how happy my thoughts were? Unbelievable.

Those were the bygone days that I thought of him much than I was thinking of my own. Those were the days that I was selfless; my emotions had put me to blindness.

Notwithstanding, I knew for a fact that he wasn't mine and will never be even how hard I try. I mean, even how often I looked at him or dreamed about him. It wouldn't change anything. Even how much I say the words "dreams do come true" in a day it wouldn't work because I know I wasn't reaching out for miracles to happen. How would I be able to win him if the best thing I could do is stealing glances and making wishes during meteor showers? I was doing nothing because my fears always eat me. Maybe, I just couldn't bear the weight of the consequences I would face if I let him know about my feelings. The first time I had this love thingy, I was heartily hoping to be loved by him. Well, I was a little in doubt what I must do to feed my endearment, for my feelings to be reciprocated. Yes, there was this time that I had longed for my love to be taken complimentarily. Unfortunately, fate didn't favour me.

Three unproductive years had passed and I was still at the same place where I was three years ago. I'm still in love of him. There is longing but it's not of the same intensity as I had before. Now, I know I am starting to embrace life beyond the sentiments of unrequited love. I am still battling to overcome this small remaining feeling deep within, this ember I'm carrying. But I know that time heals everything. Sooner I will realize I am no longer imprisoned by such emotion and could do nothing but to laugh how humurous I happened to be in the past years. Sooner, this kind of love will grow into thoughts, thoughts alone, and the feeling may no more reside in my heart. I am lucky I have felt this. Thanks K.A.