P
Philip Muls
Guest
A week after my 16th birthday, I am sitting in a classroom with 22 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 16 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 started with a smile. I am not even sure she was smiling at me, but nothing has been the same since.
One morning before school, Dexter’s 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 2 other girls all wearing winter jackets, woolen mittens and hats. She is laughing out loud because of something her friend says. 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 11th emotion, beyond the basic ten known by science i.e. love, fear, sadness, embarrassment, curiosity, pride, enjoyment, despair, guilt, and anger. Awe is the overwhelming feeling on the boundary between pleasure and fear, inspired by great beauty or the incomprehensible mystifying. It causes us to completely forget ourselfs 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. 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. James Blunt’s You're Beautiful captures this brilliantly : “I saw an angel. Of that I'm sure. She smiled at me on the subway. I don't think that I'll see her again, But we shared a moment that will last 'til the end.”
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 about love and awe.
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 power over me and not over other guys ? Can beauty be a product of love rather than an objective measure ? Can you love someone just on the outside, without knowing her really ?
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.
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 16 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 started with a smile. I am not even sure she was smiling at me, but nothing has been the same since.
One morning before school, Dexter’s 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 2 other girls all wearing winter jackets, woolen mittens and hats. She is laughing out loud because of something her friend says. 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 11th emotion, beyond the basic ten known by science i.e. love, fear, sadness, embarrassment, curiosity, pride, enjoyment, despair, guilt, and anger. Awe is the overwhelming feeling on the boundary between pleasure and fear, inspired by great beauty or the incomprehensible mystifying. It causes us to completely forget ourselfs 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. 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. James Blunt’s You're Beautiful captures this brilliantly : “I saw an angel. Of that I'm sure. She smiled at me on the subway. I don't think that I'll see her again, But we shared a moment that will last 'til the end.”
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 about love and awe.
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 power over me and not over other guys ? Can beauty be a product of love rather than an objective measure ? Can you love someone just on the outside, without knowing her really ?
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.
