Confessions of a once love-struck guy

Thank god, Valentine's Day is over. No more over-priced bouquet of flowers. No more mushy dedication over the radio, in the newspapers, practically everywhere. Don't get me wrong. I'm not against celebrating love. I'm not against over-the-top declaration of love. It's just that I can't identify the significance of Valentine's Day. It seems unfeasible for Valentine's Day to pass without a dedication over the radio airwaves or a guy standing by himself waiting for the love of his life with a bouquet of flowers. Mostly, it's the impressionable youths who do that. I mean it isn't the hardest thing to do to sell them the idea of a day to celebrate love. And they all fall for it, hook, line and sinker.

Which brings another question to mind. How do they know, at the adolescence age, if the girl they like is going to be their true love? Even adults would be hard-pressed to answer that, much less the idealistic youths of today.

I, too, was the same. I had the same problems summoning up courage to tell a girl that I liked her out of fear of rejection. Remember those days in secondary school where we would all matchmake one another, and tell the girl whom a guy admires about how much he likes her?? More often that not, nothing ever happens out of it. Then, we grew up, matured, in a sense, and left for polytechnic, JC or ITE. Knowing how better to handle the emotions, or so we thought, we summed up the courage to make that first move, only to be rejected.

I did have a girlfriend in secondary school. I don't know how I managed that but I did make that first move. It was and on-off relationship which lasted for quite a while, till I met a girl who literally captured my heart. Most of my close friends know of this episode. Though it was for a fleeting moment in my life, I know it's hard for me to forget her. The impact she had on my life was immense, she did make me leave my slightly wild ways.

Well, we've both gone our separate ways, leading separate lives. Though, I do hope she is doing well in her life, I have no wish to ever be reunited with her. Not that I don't think of her anymore or that she means little to me, just that I have moved on in my life and have a family now. Like I said to a dear friend of mine, as much as she still holds a place in my heart, I wouldn't want to trade my life since then, and it's better to let her remain a memory - forever a beautiful memory.

My other half knows all about it. I told her. It's better for it to be out in the open and be a non-issue than be kept in the dark and become an issue later on in our lives. To be part of someone's life, you have to accept his or her past, I'm glad she accepted it.