Like many others, I fall in love quite easily. I don't know if it's because I have an exceptionally busy heart, but someone pops into this heart of mine more often than seasonal colds, and because of that person, my world gently swells like dough with baking soda added, and then something inevitably happens that shatters my heart like a dropped glass, leaving the sting and bitterness of the wounds left behind 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. And I don't even know how much I have 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 a person with a wonderful heart and a neat attitude. However, how should I put it, I am no longer in my twenties, when I could jump in, setting aside everything else for just a mere attraction of the heart, and we were adults with clear roles, responsibilities, and things to care for in each of our own lives. So at first, I tried hard not to give much meaning to how my heart kept underlining and dwelling on that person.
But the heart does not always work the way we want it to, so I suppose I was deeply soaked in that person, if only for a short while. And during that time, it was as though a generous rain had finally fallen upon a desert after a long drought, 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 the time came once again to break the heart that had started to stop listening to me with my own hands, before things could become even more complicated. Of course, I did that well. It was just that afterward, I had to struggle through the rest of the day, hour after difficult hour, and only after making it safely home at the end of the day and getting 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 keep my own heart in check and handle it properly.
But this time, I could feel a slightly different voice within me. To make sure I did not miss it even a little, I quietly closed my eyes and focused all my attention in one place, sharpening every nerve in my body.
'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 were very careful not to make him uncomfortable or cross any lines, but hearts rarely listen anyway, so in the end, you probably ended up expressing it anyway. Maybe you even hoped he might feel the same way. And when those bubble-like feelings inevitably break, the pain is always real. You're left wondering what you were thinking and what you had done, drowning in embarrassment and regret. Maybe that's why you keep beating yourself up like this.
But you know, Tao, I actually think there’s something really precious and wonderful about this, about how your heart, even after being tired from it all, still stirs again and again and blossoms whenever you meet someone radiant. Even though you tell yourself not to fall in love, not to be shaken ever again, your heart is still able to fall so vividly in love, and to suddenly light up the whole world until everything feels as though it is surging with life. I believe that’s because your heart is still that young and alive.
Of course, no matter how many times you go through it, it can’t possibly be easy to watch your devotion, like the Little Mermaid’s vain hope, dissolve into foam. But even so, being able to hold such a wonderful soul in your heart, one capable of igniting a fire within you that set your entire universe ablaze, and also to have been able to learn much from that person, is by no means a small thing. In a way, it’s actually 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’ve decided to keep it close, to soften toward it, and simply to 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 this thought reached this far, I finally began to understand why that person had found his way into my heart.
© Text & Photos by Tao Jung