In Continuum.

I loved my cap, I really did. It was just a simple cap made from denim, with the picture of a propeller-powered plane printed on the front. But I went everywhere with that cap, and I just loved it for no reason at all. So there I am, frozen in time in the living room, with that cap on my head and ready for a whole new adventure. Little did I know that the adventure would also take away my favorite cap in the world, the very same day. We ended up at the playground then, and I remember taking off the cap and then placing it on a bench before running into the playground. We hung out there for a while, killed some time, and then we decided that it'd be neat to take a ride on the monorail that circled the island. The lot of us got onto the monorail, and that was when I realized the cool breeze that kissed the top of my head - I wasn't wearing my cap any longer. I searched frantically in my backpack and my parents', but the only conclusion we came up with was that we left it at the playground only moments before. The monorail came by the playground a few minutes later, and I remember seeing my cap on the bench then, just sitting there alone and helpless. I started crying, I really did. But there wasn't anything that I could have done in order to save my cap, because the train stopped for no one, and I had no choice but to move on. But I loved that cap, and I still do. 

The thing about us humans, is that we are so conscious of ourselves all the time. The make-ups and the clothes aside, we care even about how we stand, where we stand, what we speak and how we speak it. Everything and anything could be used as a way for someone else to measure you, anything could be used against you one way or another. Oh, that person talks with an accent I don't like, or his words are blunt and shallow, but most of all just incredibly dull. Anything could be used against you, which is why we are always so self-conscious about things. You stand in the middle of a train carriage on the way to town, and a million things could work against you from a thousand different perspectives. The way that you stand could mean that you are too feminine for your own good, or the place that you stand could be blocking the way of somebody else, which could in turn cause that person to give you a dirty stare or to curse you inside his or her head. Either way, because of the dozen different possibilities involved, we are consciously or sub-consciously careful with the way we do, well, everything. Everything we do in life, then, is an effort for us to be loved a little more. It is kind of sad if you see it that way, but it's true if you think about it. 

Some of us spend our whole lives being paralyzed about what other people may think of them. You know, worried that he or she may not like me, fearing that he or she may not fancy me very much. Even if that other person is just another classmate in existence, someone you don't actually talk to on a regular basis. Somehow, you just want that person to acknowledge that you are "a nice guy", that you are "trustworthy", that you can be "depended on". Yeah, we all like praises and compliments like that, we are all suckers for pretty words and euphemisms. Pretty words have the ability to give us a false sense of euphoric high, and we believe them somehow even if they are not true. That is because, whatever that we do, we want people to love us a little more, and being assured that you are "a nice guy", you have thus achieved your goals. We all want to be loved a little more, it's kind of how we are built as human beings. Knowing what love is is just one of the reasons why we are different from animals. We sign contracts, we take vows, we make love to someone we love not because of instinct, but because it really means something. We are naturally selfish creatures who are really in existence for ourselves, there isn't anything noble in loving and being loved in return. 

A few months ago, probably two, I came to a conclusion that you cannot please everybody by being everybody. One of my lecturer quoted Abraham Lincoln at one point, saying, "You can please some of the people, some of the time. You can please all of the people, some of the time. But you cannot please all of the people, all of the time". That quote stuck with me for a long time, and I suppose that rings true in this context. I figured that manipulating and changing myself to suit others caused myself to distance further away from, well, my true self. Everything became fake, unreal, synthetic, pretentious. I did this to please this group of people, and I did that to please that group of people. I was on an identity meltdown, and I didn't even know it. Pulling myself so far away from myself only caused me to lose touch, and all for that little more love to be showered on me from all directions. You could say that it was greed that drove me, that urge to be loved by more people, as if one's identity really depends on something as trivial. I was willing to believe that who I was depended on what others thought of me, imagine how pathetic and low I stooped. 

Then, I started to readjust myself, I took a step back. I saw myself as myself, from a distance, and found out that I really didn't need to be pleasing everybody else to please myself - I really only need to please myself, period. So I indulged myself, with the kind of friends that I'd like to make, the kind of books I'd like to read, the kind of food I'd like to eat. Everything was about me, me, me, and more me, and everything just worked out naturally. I no longer did things because somebody else approved of it, I did it because I wanted to. I wanted to live for myself, not for the liking of somebody else. Life is too short to allow somebody else to tell you what to love and what not to love all the time, and that really should be as far as anybody should be concerned, most of the time. The same idea, I apply to love in general, and I decided to love everybody just the same, even those people who weren't all that nice in the past. You treat everybody as equal, you love them the same, then who you are really is this thing you have with everybody else in your life, this love. 

But there's love, and there's love, as my ESL lecturer would say. Some people are loved more than the others for different reasons. Some people are loved because they like the same things as you do, hate the same things as you do, or maybe something as minor as having the same knee problems as you do, who knows? It could be anything, whatever floats your boat (or rubber ducky, whatever). Some people are loved because they are different from everybody else, and because they are special. Not weird, special. It isn't so bad if you are going to love a person for who you think she is, to see what you want to see. That was the mistake that I committed the first time around, to see the person only in the way I wanted to see her. Hardworking, family-loving, beautiful girl from junior college with those jet black hair. I still remember the way that I looked at her, which in retrospect is just anything but the truth. Anyway, the worst part is when you alter yourself in order to be loved by that person. You compromise, you make yourself available all the time, to serve, to be there, all because you want that person to love you, really love you, a little more. 

There's commitment, and then there's blind commitment. The latter involves you changing yourself to suit others, and it sure seems much easier to gain someone else's love that way. But seriously, what does that add up to in the end, anyway? You are just fooling yourself, because that person is really in love with this act that you have put up, this character from a TV show and not the actor himself. Which is why, I believe, even when it comes to the person that I choose to love, it really shouldn't be a two-way thing in the first place. There isn't anything wrong with a one-way interest, sometimes it remains beautiful that way in a hopeless infatuation fashion. I no longer look for a reply when it comes to confession, but just letting that somebody else know about my feelings is more than enough. Because, when it comes right down to it, what she thinks about me really is none of my business. It is about what I think and what I feel, and I am what I love, not what loves me. It doesn't matter if you might think that you are imperfect, not beautiful enough, flawed, or whatever. To me, you are perfect. 

So you take shots in the dark, you make wild guesses and just hope and pray that one of the darts is going to hit the target. And if it doesn't, you just have to dust yourself off and move on. You've had your shot, you gave it a try, and if you know that you've given it all you've got, your really cannot have any regrets. It's kind of like that cap that I lost at Sentosa, the kind of feeling that one would get if you ever experience a rejection of sorts. I'm not sure why the family didn't actually go back to get the cap though, they probably thought it to be too unimportant to make the trip. Still, I cried my eyeballs out that afternoon, I remember, and all over a stupid denim cap with a plane printed on it. I get sentimental, and I get emotional over the smallest and the littlest of things, and it does take me some time to get over certain, well, things. It is surprising to observer, however, how the last bad ending has changed everything inside my head and re-wired everything. Desensitization seems to have set in, and my skin has been toughened over time. I am still prone to falling in love, but the reality of love doesn't seem to penetrate my skin so readily any longer. 

It is kind of sad, but I suppose that is how it works when you want to throw knifes into the dark. You kind of wish and you hope, you don't really expect anything. When you don't expect anything, you will never get disappointed. When you are never disappointed, you are always happy. It doesn't mean that one has to immediately snap out of a rejection, but it doesn't mean that it has to be a life altering event that'd change your life forever. That'd be exaggerating, or just you drowning in pointless self-pitying. To live in oblivion, at times, is a good thing. It doesn't matter what that person might think about you, life really is too short to ponder over so many things. Just dive, think later, I say. If I think that you are perfect, if I think that you are beautiful, if I think that you are everything that you think that you are not, then it really is my business and no one else's. I took a dive, but I suppose the waters were too shallow, and I bumped my nose on the bottom just a little bit. But it's alright, it's okay. Wipe a tear and pop a pill, everything will be fine by morning. Because really, what I feel about you is what I feel about you, and it is also my business if I want to be stubborn, or just give in completely and implode eventually. You are still my favorite person to be with on a lazy Saturday afternoon. No one is going to change that, Melon. You are still the magic on long bus rides I want to wake up to. Stay, don't change. Hook, press, blow?