TURNING AROUND IN LOVE

It never occurred to me that something I had always laughed at and belittled in the past would be the very thing that could spawn teardrops in my eyes today and be considered pivotal in my entire being.

I'm talking about those tragic but sometimes with happy ending love stories one usually stumbles upon love-themed Web sites. My college classmates way back then had this "addiction" to such literature that a seatmate even had them printed and compiled neatly, ready to be passed around if someone got interested in reading them.

He was one of them, a "boy" I have always considered my first-ever real male friend, someone who was usually "present" wherever I was, then corporally. (Now I'm curious who was following whom?)

To my recollection he had handwritten copies of one or two of those kind of stories that he once asked me to read and rate from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest, as to how they appealed to me. I really didn't know what he was on about (still don't know until now) but I caved in, giggling thereafter. Dismayed by my score of "2", he demanded for an explanation and said that it was no laughing matter. The protagonists' fate was to be pitied, he said. I laughed harder and mockingly criticized the actions of the boy and the girl who were in love with each other for the longest time but suppressed their feelings for they were supposedly "best of friends."

At that time, I honestly found it a funny thing: boy meets girl, they turn into friends/best friends, realizes that s/he has special feelings for his/her friend, hides it in perpetuity until one dies, and eventually the one left finds out (more often than not through a diary) that the deceased had mutual feelings for him/her. Then regret sets in: "If only I confessed my love for him/her," "I should have known s/he loved me, too. Kaya pala...(That is why...)" "Oh! s/he loved me all along. Why didn't s/he tell me?" Sobs, sobs, sobs.

I regarded the whole setup pathetic. How could anyone hide such feelings from someone he's always with? If one happens to fall for a friend, tell it to him. That's an easy task, I guess, especially for the boy, considering that the first move is always expected from the males. As for the girl, likewise it won't be that hard. Better show it than be sorry. Or so I thought...

It IS NOT funny. And it IS NOT easy at all. My first love, the kind of love they claim "never dies," I found in him. Now, I'm caught between keeping our friendship and telling to the whole world that I love him. Now, I'm unhappily laughing at myself, wondering if, like in those tragic love stories, my pent-up feelings for my boy bestfriend will be revealed through my diary. T_T