Like many others, I fall in love quite easily. I don't know if it's because I have a particularly restless heart, but someone pops into it more often than the seasonal cold, and because of them, my world gently swells like dough rising with baking powder, and then my heart inevitably shatters like a dropped glass, leaving the sting and bitterness of the remaining wounds entirely to me.
'I shouldn't do this again. I really need to stop acting all awkward like a sixteen-year-old girl in front of someone I like.' I have made that resolution thousands and tens of thousands of times already, but in fact, it is of little use. I don't even know how much I have also blamed myself for continuing to repeat the same foolishness, even after going through such a foolish vicious cycle countless times."
"It is embarrassing to admit, but until recently, I was swelling with soft excitement once again like that. He was a truly radiant person. And just as much as his neat appearance, he was someone with a wonderful heart and a polite attitude. However, I am no longer in my twenties, when I could jump in, setting aside everything else for mere attraction, and we were adults with clear roles, responsibilities, and things to care for in our own lives. So at first, I tried hard not to attach much meaning to how my heart kept underlining and dwelling on him.
But the heart does not always work as we wish, so I suppose I was deeply soaked in him, if only for a short while. During that time, it was as though a generous rain had finally fallen upon a drought-stricken desert, and tender shoots began to sprout across the land, while countless flower buds shyly showed their smiles.
But no matter how well I tried to dress it up, it was ultimately nothing more than a story like the confession of someone who had fallen in love alone, written in a diary. And before things could become even more complicated for various reasons, the time came once again to break with my own hands the heart that had stopped listening to me. Of course, I handled that well. It was just that afterward, as I struggled through the rest of the day, hour after difficult hour, only after making it safely home at the end of the day and crawling under the covers did I finally groan through the ache in my heart, as if salt had been rubbed into a scrape. Even then, as if out of habit, I was harshly berating myself for once again bringing about this situation because I had failed to properly keep my own heart in check and handle it with skill.
But this time, I could feel a slightly different voice within me. To ensure I did not miss a single detail, I quietly closed my eyes, sharpened every nerve in my body, and focused all my attention inward.
'I know you’ve been through this over and over, and it still hurts every time, doesn’t it? But even so, I really don’t understand why you hate yourself and treat yourself so harshly. Look at the person you liked, even if only for a little while. Handsome, fit, kind, and wise. Who wouldn’t fall for that?
Sure, you might have made things a bit awkward. You tried a hundred times to soothe, reason with, and even threaten your heart so you wouldn't make him uncomfortable or cross any lines, but hearts are naturally as stubborn as seven-year-olds, so in the end, you probably ended up expressing it anyway. Perhaps you even held a faint hope that he might feel the same way. And when those bubble-like feelings break, it is always a painful thing. You are left wondering what on earth you were thinking and what you had done, feeling so thoroughly embarrassed and full of regret that you keep beating yourself up like this.
But you know, Tao, I actually think there is something really precious and wonderful about how your heart, without ever tiring, still stirs and blossoms again and again whenever you meet someone radiant. Even though you swore to yourself not to fall in love and not to be shaken ever again, the fact that your heart can still fall in love so vividly, making the whole world shine as if surging with life, is because your heart is still that young and alive.
Of course, no matter how many times you experience it, watching a naive passion that felt like Little Mermaid's futile hope turn into sea foam can never be easy. That sting is always painfully real. Even so, the fact that you held such a wonderful soul in your heart, one bright enough to spark a flame that set your entire universe ablaze, and that you were able to learn so much from him is by no means a small thing. In a way, it is something to be truly grateful for.
So I just hope you don’t hate your heart too much, the part of you that keeps falling in love again and again without knowing how to stop. Even if it leads to moments of embarrassment or self-blame again, it’s really not that serious, so I wish you wouldn’t take it so hard.
There will come a time, maybe when you’re forty or fifty, when you’ll understand what this really means more deeply. And by then, there may come a day when the very feelings you so desperately want to discard now will feel deeply nostalgic.'
I spend this season embracing and gently soothing my own shortcomings. Trying to let go, to resent myself less, and to make peace day by day as much as possible, I swim through a page of my younger years with steady determination. In doing so, I keep letting things go because I believe only then can what truly matters remain, and only then can I fully settle into it. And yet this clumsy heart of mine, so quick to fall in love and get hurt, refuses to be discarded no matter how many times I try. So instead, I have decided to keep it close, soften toward it, and simply cherish it.
Then, as I lifted my head and looked around, I realized that what had stayed with me all this time wasn’t the world’s most dazzling things. It was, instead, the things that were just as flawed and unremarkable as I was, things I had once gathered and quietly cherished, and kept alive until they could bloom again. And as my thoughts reached this far, I finally began to understand why that person had found his way into my heart.
© Text & Photos by Tao Jung