2006-09-29
Infatuations
True to my teenaged years, I have been busy with infatuation. But more busy I have been about infatuation. People often try to define Love and make little coffee-table philosophies about them, but no one ever tries to explain infatuation. Everyone understands the word "superficial", doesn't he?
People say that infatuation is easy to recognize. It refers to that cute guy who keeps looking at you and you can't stop glancing back at either. Or that charming sweet-talker who made the world disappear when you sat together for lunch and you can't wait to meet again. Sure, they make the colour come to your cheeks, your skin tingle, and possibly, possibly, even make your heart flutter just a tiny bit. You tell yourself that these things aren't serious. You don't even remember them for long. But what happens when a guy you know slowly creeps up from behind and steals your heart away with laughter, jokes and friendship?
You find that with him, you are first and foremost friends. You banter, you tease, you play, and you talk. There are boundaries you don't cross; there are signs you must read. Then there are also tacit agreements you make silently, and little things you pick up about each other so that he doesn't ever have to tell you that he hates coffee. You already know it.
But he doesn't know that somewhere inside, the eyes that learn these little things are also learning a whole new way of seeing. And sometimes, when they look straight back at his, they get lost and scared, yet at the same time, complete and exhilarated. You can only drop your gaze when you remember that he doesn't know what these eyes do. He doesn't know you see what you do.
You find yourself turning over each memory you've had with him, and smiling upon them like precious gems. They make you laugh. They make you want to live them out again. Then they make you cry, because they remind you that you're but his buddy. He doesn't know you bear the arms of gender in your expeditions.
You can't really tell what you like best about him - but you know that it really helps that he looks awfully good. His smile that used to coax your complicity, now curve your lips tenderly. But he doesn't notice the difference. You think.
His gorgeous eyes you acknowledged but never really noticed start to bug you. You notice how warm he is, how muscular he has become. And how you really are beginning to like the feeling of his arm draped carelessly around the back of your chair.
As all friends-by-circumstances do, you begin to drift when fate draws your lives into two separate plans. You grin at him when you turn the corner, sometimes you exchange greetings in the cafeteria, but increasingly, you see him walk past with some other girl, some other friend.
You watch as other girls go up and try their luck with him - other girls who probably began as you did, only bolder, braver, and favoured more by fortune. But you don’t know how to let the die in your hands roll. You don't want to anyway - the probabilities of winning are too, too low. He seems rather fond of that girl anyway. Or that other girl. Pretty girls, prettier girls.
You can't decide if you're missing the friend more, or the guy you've come to obsess over each waking moment of your life. You try to strike up one more conversation, make one more meeting. You don't know if you're doing this as a friend, or simply as Girl, with a silent, unannounced crush. You try to make it seem as innocent as possible, of course - he mustn't know.
Why shouldn't he know? Because friendships are forever, and infatuations aren't; because telling him would ruin your friendship; because Friendship is what he wants, and friendship is better than nothing.
So how is it that something as superficial as an infatuation can drive one so completely insane?
nothing ever happens at 3:10 p.m.