LovesickA Story by Philip MulsBoy meets girl, a classic case of rejectionA week after my sixteenth birthday, I am sitting in a
classroom with twenty-two other boys pretending to listen to a Latin teacher. Our
minds are everywhere but here. I for one cannot stop thinking about Connie. She is the reason
for the lovesick state I have been in for weeks now. She is the epitome of perfection to the sixteen-year-old me.
She has hazel brown eyes and a classic face of beauty. She is wearing a navy
school dress accentuating her figure. For a moment, it makes me wonder whether
the school has intended this effect when making girls wear a uniform. With her
hair in a boy cut, she is simply irresistible. I do not fight it, I am
powerless. I recognize a higher force. She walks with an air of carefree confidence, seemingly
unaware of what she does to boys and men. With hindsight, that was a pretty naive
thought on my part, I now know that she was aware of her powers. Pretending she
wasn’t just made it perfect. It starts with a smile. Dexys Midnight Runners are playing their signature song Come on Eileen as a backdrop to the epic
scene that follows. I am looking at Connie walking towards me along with two
other girls all wearing winter jackets, woolen mittens and hats. She looks like
an angel. She is laughing out loud because of something her friend said. Her
gaze crosses mine and it seems to me that her smile is now directed straight at
me. She simply says “Hi, don’t you just love this song ?”. That’s it. That is all that happens. I am in awe. Awe is called the eleventh emotion, beyond the basic ten known
by science. Awe plays on the boundary between pleasure and fear, inspired by
great beauty or the incomprehensible mystifying. It causes us to completely
forget ourselves in a moment of great wonder, feeling the presence of something
greater. Yes, right on the mark. I am in awe. And I am not equipped to deal with it. I manage to say a
profound “Hi, yes I do” back at her and she gives me a coy glance that will
stay with me forever. A few days later, I even ask her out in a burst of
supreme confidence. She hesitates for a brief moment… That moment lingers on in my eternity. It is a moment in
which all is still possible and yet you feel that it is not you but fate that
will prevail. She said no. Later in life, I learned how to see rejection as a useful step
in the pursuit of victory. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and all
that. But back then, it took me apart. When it comes to drama,
there’s nothing quite like unrequited love. For weeks I did not sleep or eat. It
seemed to me that the meaning of life was found and instantly lost again. If rejection hurts, rejection without a reason is a killer. It
tortured me in the most intense way that she denied me the chance to that one date. To my endless frustration,
guys who were not paralyzed by her loveliness did manage to get on a date with
her. And they did it in a casual way, nothing to it. A lesson in love right there ! She needed a cool guy, a guy she
had to fight for. Why did I not know that ? Why was this not genetically
pre-arranged in my moves ? Why did all the males that preceded me let me go
empty-handed to an unfair fight ? Thinking back about it so many years later, it makes me
wonder. Why was I in awe looking at her and not at other girls, who were in
fact even more beautiful ? Why did her smile hold that much power over me, like
I felt her sweet innocence was out of this world and I had to pursue her with
everything I got? Exquisitely painful as it was, I wouldn’t want to have
missed it. This First Love which did
not go beyond “Hi” and yet took on legendary proportions in my memory, inspired
me to look for experiences that brought me the same feeling of bewilderment and
wonder. But somehow, I never quite reached the same high octane level in my
emotional fuel and probably never will.
By design it seems… you can only be truly lovesick once. © 2015 Philip MulsAuthor's Note
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Added on September 20, 2015Last Updated on December 10, 2015 Tags: lovesick, awe, power of a smile, bewilderment AuthorPhilip MulsGrimbergen, BelgiumAboutLiving in Europe, but travelling frequently in US and Asia. I love to combine what I experience during travel with observations and thoughts about the human condition. more..Writing
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