How to Chase Her and Fail

[Last part of "The Manual" series]

Unlike the grand lottery, you are predictable. Every move you make, with or without liquor, is certain to teeter between tragedy and comedy. The closest to consistency you have ever been is being able to commit every lethal combination of imprudence and negligence. Each time, you are able to come out alive, barely escaping with a heavily bruised heart and a badly wounded spirit. Maintaining a stiff upper lip throughout will not change anything. In three months, nobody will dignify your foolhardiness with a condescending remark. It is as if you were never there, a boy whose existence is not even close to that of an unborn dream. By the fourth month, you suddenly take shape—an undignified shape—and for the first time you are noticed. Fueled by solitude and driven by despair, you clamber on.

Clumsy is the first word you breathe, recite and embrace. Disaster is second. With a soul already dented by the pestilence of memory, your youthful blood will append more recklessness to your young mind. But like any game of chance, you gamble with love and bet your life, or what is left of it, every step of the way. Like a resilient soldier always willing to cross every line drawn by unknown hands, you know quite well that you have nothing more to lose but only the girl to gain. For the third time in your life, you feel alive.

Clothe your naked conviction with fibers of courage and filaments of pride. The battleground is as frigid as frozen fields cast in eternal tundra, leaving little mercy, if any, for the underling seeking comfort in skins and bones. Be brave. Send her letters more than you can possibly write. Ink every poignant thought by finding your voice in words. Tell her the things you are dying to say and not the things you are saying in order to die. Offer the love to last three lifetimes after the first ten. She will not believe you. It means three things. One, she is normal. Two, something is wrong. Three, something else is right.

You want her so bad it feels so good. Chasing her is a challenge and help is nowhere. There is no compromise. Right in the murky mire, one thing is as clear as sunlight: she already knows you like her. It is as stubborn as the stain that you have no intention to wipe. Unfortunately, you have no idea if the feeling is mutual, or if it will ever be one. Worse, you remain uncertain if she is even running away from you, or if she is now willing to be chased.

The only girl who broke your heart each day in eight years remains a riddle. She is a cureless affliction, a fatal malady coursing your veins, never failing to remind you of your own mortality every moment you feel invulnerable. Her elegant smile is a hex and her glance is your tormentor. Softly, she kills. Explanations there are none except for one: they are the chisels that sculpt your life by chipping away the crude layers. In all these, she is the artisan. You have survived in one piece, only less than before.

Although all is fair in love and war, assume the role of the pessimist. Without doubt, it is not the most exciting job in the world. So is your life. All unrequited sentiments deserve scant sympathy, if not the exit door. Like placid but dirty water in the kitchen sink, they must necessarily go. The putrid odor of stagnant emotions is harrowing. It does not invite romance. It invites more of the same misery and familiar folly. Unclog the hole and drain everything. Fail in each try, knowing fully well that to love is to linger more than you can, warts and all. Sometimes, you desire to tinker with the stars so that the rest of the universe will conspire in your favor at least for once. But you have short hands and an even shorter imagination to reach the heavens.

Remember to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Do that and nothing can stand between you and yourself because, deny as you might, you are your own resolute enemy. Through eight years, you have struggled against yourself more than you have struggled with it. Stand in front of the mirror and watch the face of defeat and triumph blend in a single reflection. Ogle your severely diminished pride as it continuously depletes, slowly but surely, until, at last, you have none of it left. The chase, though, is far from over.

But one day, you will fail for the last time. Soon, her cheeks will be reserved for the kisses that will be planted by lips not yours. Someone else will hold her chin and you will not be there to witness her surrender to the embrace of a stranger. Your fingers will never trace her face and skin on nights lovelier than anything you can imagine. She will love and it will be the end.

Grow old alone.



Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5