Fiction: A story of failure in love - coping with it and coming out of it with grace and a great hope to triumph when love comes the second time around.
==============================================================
by Philipina A. Marcelo
I was trying to cheer a friend up who just broke up with her then significant other with a pint of Häagen-Dazs cinnamon dulce de leche and home service pedicure. A few months before that, I was sedating her with exaggerated sarcasm and made-up negativity because she was deliriously happy for being with him, her mouth was actually foaming! Hmm, on second thought, it must have been the Heineken.
The truth is her happiness seemed immeasurable, even for her closest shopping buddies. She came in to work in the morning, humming some sappy Carpenters song, saying hello to everyone and everything (yes, everything) she passed by. For a while, she didn’t need coffee to lift her up every morning, and she was a girl with an acutely caffeinated blood stream! I guess the inspiration he brought her was her stock of caffeine, and the most potent kind, too. She rose before sunrise and floated on cloud nine all day long. The tasks that used to be hellish for her at work, she pulled off without any trouble, at times even seemed to enjoy them. She found humor in other people’s meanness and ignored negative criticisms like simple bad jokes said by hopeless comedians with bad timing. She was so happy it was almost ridiculous!
She had so much energy, she could work all day and until late at night without losing her firm grip of details and high-quality output. All she needed was to be close to her laptop and type in senseless little things that got senseless little things for a response popping out in her messenger every now and then. She lit up with excitement each time a “ting” sounded off from her computer. The discreet smile that touched her lips as she typed in something in her messenger actually brought twinkle to her eyes. There was no disappointment from work and anywhere else in her life that didn’t get dissolved by that tiny little ting of a sound. Her hair seemed to shine and bounced with dazzling gleam. Her skin glowed beautifully, transforming her otherwise average features to a truly lovely look. She was a perfect picture of health and deep joy. She radiated positive energy around her that made people enjoy her presence. Although I was convinced she was in love, I kept administering her with a good dose of skepticism daily just to keep her from getting lost to the vulnerability of her happy state.
“It feels so good, so right,” she used to say in gasping voice. While others get consumed by the intensity of their desire to touch and be touched by their loved one, his touch ignited a fire within her that melted darkness into a feeling of reassuring warmth. Rather than chaotic ecstasy, she felt comforting calmness in his presence that made her lose herself in peaceful tranquility. “It’s such a beautiful feeling, I can’t even begin to describe it,” she said. And, she ran about happily in her blissful state.
Just when she started building her hopes for the future around his presence, the “tings” from her laptop started to come sparingly. And then they came in trickles, if at all. The twinkle in her eyes started to fade and she started to lose the spring in her strides. “He thinks we have nothing in common,” she explained more to herself than to anyone else. He stopped communicating completely, ignored her attempts to talk. No word, no comfort. Losing the inner strength that he brought, she fell ill. The color in her world faded until all corners turned sullen and grey. She lost the positive attitude so that every criticism at work stabbed like sharp daggers in her heart. And she reeled in dark misery. “How can it be possible that the one person who makes you the happiest is the same person who makes you the saddest,” she asked, and she wished there was an answer. She wallowed in grief until tears ran dry.
As she scraped the Häagen-Dazs container without an ounce of guilt, she reveled at how her newly cleaned toe nails started to take shape under that nail file – almost like a magic wand. She checked an array of nail polish bottles and nodded at the sparkly bronze color. As I began to cover her toe nails with the glittery but warmly colored nail polish, her eyes started to come alive as her lips took the shape of a tentative smile. After coating all her toe nails with the richly colored liquid, the tentative smile turned to a full smile, not quite radiating happiness nor bringing twinkle to her eyes, but it was a smile – a start. She sat back, held her feet up to admire her newly groomed toe nails, her eyes were almost sparkling. She blushed, almost glowed and she knew right there and then what the next move was – shop for new shoes!
She moved from one rack to another, trying on different styles and colors, checking them out in the mirror. As she flashed a truly happy smile in the mirror each time she saw a pair of shoes she liked, I knew then that she’ll be fine. She will come in and out of loneliness that’s for sure, but one day true love will come and she’ll be happy again. For now, maybe a haircut or a new hairstyle will make her forget the old girl whose world just fell apart, and see a new girl who is ready to face the world again.
“There you go, hon… the new you,” the hair stylist announced excitedly as she untied the protective cape. I looked at myself in the mirror, I liked what I saw. I stood up, gave my hair a gentle pat and paid my bill. On my way out of the salon, I caught a glimpse of the new me in the mirror. I smiled and whispered, “looking good, girl!” And with a cheerful wink at my reflection in the mirror, I walked out of the salon in my new pair of wedges that showed off my bronze coated toe nails. The wedges lent me a nice strut that almost spelled confidence as I walked out with a renewed courage to face the world again.
