(Short Story / 3rd of 5 Parts)

He admitted being so stupid for feeling how he felt because my grandmother was so young at that time, almost half his age. He admitted to being inappropriate because he was already married then.

“Ahh, those were why you did not love him in return, you were half his age, and he’s married?” Right Grandma? I inquired.

“Just keep on reading, will you!” was Grandma’s response.

I expected she would finally tell me directly how she felt about her adorer. It was again a futile attempt. I just continued reading.

—–

 “I have laughed off Francis Bacon’s thesis about love. He said that love is similar to the stage. It is filled with tragedy, comedy, mischief, and fury. I thought it was a shallow analogy. But now here I am, sounding like an actor in a play delivering a soliloquy. And I am not sure when this will end… when I end talking to myself. “

 “This is a comedy. I made myself my own laughingstock. And I am almost certain you are laughing now at my stupidity.”

—–

I paused reading again and asked my grandma, “Did you consider all these kinds of stuff stupidity, grandma?”

“Never! Why should I?” was her curt reply.

When I continued, I suddenly laughed (and my grandma was amused) when I read that portion of the adorer’s blog where he admitted he was crazy thinking of grandma almost every moment. The following lines are similar to the content of my video message to a pretty classmate I was wooing at that time. The next were the words I told that lady, “I think of you almost every moment…before sleeping at night, I would think of you. I would see you in my dreams, and when I woke up, the image of your pretty smiling face would greet me. You seemed to have established omnipresence in my consciousness. Your image is present in the books I read, in the movies I watch, in the sky, in the trees, EVERYWHERE!

Then I continued reading the blogs…

—–

 ” I have disagreed with Bacon when he posited that ‘it is impossible to love and to be wise.’ It is equivalent to saying that love makes a person crazy. I disagreed, but here I am swirling around my own disagreement.”

 “Funny, but I considered kinds of stuff like these childish. I hate being dramatic. But it’s exactly what I have become.”

 “What have you done to me? Most of my working hours were spent daydreaming about you. The first time that something like this happened to me. I never paid so much attention to a lady, and never had I almost begged to be given attention in return. There were women I dated who were as pretty and charming as you are but more sophisticated and schooled. But none of them charmed me the way you did. None of those beautiful and successful women made me feel and act so strangely this way. It was only you – a youngster – someone who has yet to prove her worth. You rendered my training in Philosophy worthless, for in matters about you, I have become illogical.”

 “Yeah, I hate to admit it, but what happened is plain stupidity. This should not be, but I am so helpless. People at a certain stage in their lives commit stupid acts and say stupid things they may regret. Is this my turn?”

—–

“Gosh, Grandma, are you sure you are not a witch? I would like to think that you gave this man some potion.” 

My grandma just gave me a smile and a loving nudge on my nape in response. “I would say that he had really gone crazy over you. How did he cope? I hope that your most ardent adorer did nothing stupid.”

Grandma smiled and said, “He is a decent man! He did nothing wrong! I did not know about his feelings, his predicaments, or the pain I caused him. He kept those to himself for a long time! Everything seemed normal when we talked personally, on the phone, or exchanged text messages! Okay, just read on.”

Read on. I did. I passed by entries that vividly elucidated the man’s emotional struggles, the predicament I hoped I would never be able to undergo.

—–

“That night, I went to the riverbank where I would have my reflections every time I would be emotionally burdened. Falling in love was supposed to be a wonderful feeling, but why it has become an emotional struggle for me. It has brought me more sadness than joy. 

No, the sadness was not a product of guilt for falling in love with another woman when I had already tied the knot with another one. Not even for falling in love with someone so young. The moral purists may disagree, but falling in love is never wrong. Falling in love per se is not a sin. The subsequent acts committed to pursuing the feeling would determine whether it’s sinful. Ahh, I am clearly trying to justify my stupidity.”

—–

Falling in love is a beautiful experience, but the adorer’s seemingly hopeless struggle to shrug off the feeling prevents him from experiencing the joy of falling in love. He said that he tried so hard to suppress the emotion. But to no avail. The adorer admitted having his ways with women. He knew how to make women fall in love but never tried any trick on my grandmother.

The adorer wished that he could circumvent the existing moral standards so he would not suffer from his ethical dilemma or that he could have been born in a culture that would not give him such prohibitions.

—–

 “I know I can love you but never have you. I can love you, for nobody has the right to prevent me from feeling what I have felt for you. As hard as I did, I could not restrain my heart from falling in love with you.

But I can never have you for obvious reasons. That I needed to accept wholeheartedly my love for you is a love that was never meant to be.   

It was also pride, not guilt, preventing me from experiencing the joy of falling in love. I found it hard to accept that a young woman like you could put me on an emotional leash. But that also is a reality I have to accept. I gladly put in your hands that emotional leash. Make me happy, make me sad. Do as you wish!

Could this be my karma? I used to be the one who held the handle of the emotional leash.” 

—–

I sympathized deeply with the man for all the emotional struggles he underwent because of his love for Grandma. What could be more painful than finally finding true love in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and under the wrong circumstances? What a crazy fate! This stuff, I thought, I would only read in stories and watch in movies.

In one blog entry, he mentioned how sad he became one night when he heard the song “Please Don’t Ask Me.” I sympathized so profoundly when he said that the line in the song that hit him the hardest was… “It only hurts the more I pretend that we could ever be more than friends.”

Several other blog entries dealt with how wholeheartedly my grandma’s adorer accepted the realities that confronted him – the truth that only a youngster like my grandma then would drive him nuts – the reality that he could love my grandma, but he could never have her – the reality that they could never be more than friends.

Then I noticed that sadness gradually disappeared in the landscape of Peeker’s next blogs as weeks passed after he met Grandma.

EVERLASTING (Part 4)