Oh, you stupid young people. You foolish, raw seedlings. What makes you so irresistable also paves your downfall.

You’re serving up your brand of affection, only no one’s ordering that dish. No one takes their love neat these days; it’s more fashionable with a twist of lime or diluted with a dash of water. And some want it on the rocks, too.

1.She met him some ten years ago, he a young teacher then, she his student.

Though he had a family and wife, the inevitable happened. And lasted.

Often, she’d wait up for him. Days would be spent hoping he was free after school, before he went back home to his family. And days would be wasted.

But she’d be free for the promise of a fleeting moment. And they would happen infrequently, but just often enough to sustain her for the next stretch of waiting.

You don’t understand what I have to do because you’re young, he says. She accepts the label with bowed head and tries not to question him a second time.

We’re free and independent, she says. We’ve got an understanding. I understand that he loves me but can’t be with me, and he understands that when I find someone, I’ll move on.

To be casual is to throw on a sheath of comfortable maturity.

It’s been eight years, and she hasn’t found anyone else.

2.She spends five days a week with him. Going by most standards, this is fairly healthy, only that they spend about three out of those five days almost certainly locked in tense moments, stretching terse conversation over miles of time.

The triggers are slight. But the pathway to the goodnight kiss is riddled with them.

Is the goodnight kiss worth it? It used to be. She almost believes it sometimes still is.

But things seem somewhat imbalanced. No one thing is of equal importance to either.

Is it a conflict of personalities? She thinks so. But he doesn’t agree; he lays it down to a simple mismatch of ages.

He’s far older, a professional in his thirties and he’s taken pains to craft an image he’s happy to cloak himself in.

She’s a decade younger, is also a professional but is likewise a decade behind in solidifying her stance on life, herself and other people.

Ironically, that’s what attracted him to her at the start. Once, he told her he was loathe to see her lose that belief in people, the softness that seemed so refreshing…then.

Ah, but that bloody coin has its flip side, doesn’t it. He wants to see her be less afraid, be more sure, display less enthusiasm about silly, embarrasingly-childish fixations. And so she does.

But he also wants to see her be less opinionated. For her attempts to overcompensate and speak her mind have landed her with labels of ‘impetuous’ and ‘bratty’, with nary the approval delivered along with it.

Second-guessing and triple-guessing is hard work, silly girl. Another lesson in life dealt by the pragmatism of his love, anyway.

To reveal her heart is to betray her age. But to feign a bulletproof state is a pathetically-transparent exercise. Consciously holding her tongue each time she wants to blurt out an “I love you”, she knows he’ll appreciate the effort. After all, saying it often cheapens it, as he says, and she wants to make her “I love yous” as precious as his are to her.

She’s a good learner. She may be making mistakes, but the transformation is happening. A silent, insidious gangrene systematically gaining, but she’ll be damned if it doesn’t work.

Come out of this fixing the problem and you win. But come out jaded and resentful, you lose. Preserve who you are, and you won’t come out at all.

Easy peasy.

3.Hankering after phonecalls from home has become the mainstay of her time there. A word or two hinting of possible love and affection keeps her going for days, sometimes months.

Love propels her. Have you heard of anything as ridiculous?

She wants to be home, but not because she misses her friends or family. She misses him, and it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t miss her. He does, silently, she knows it.

Studying abroad gets lonely, but she’s already landed a great job in another country before graduating so she can help lay the first tile of their path together.

That’s independence, what he wants of her. Living abroad, having nice things, cutting apron strings, being strong…Oh—perhaps just short of that last one.

Because she does all these things for him. To create the life they supposedly want. Only she seems to be alone in wanting it all of the sudden.

He’s too busy to call, he complains. Isn’t once a month plenty? What more does she want from him? So what if she’s back home to see him? If she loves him as much as she says, she won’t find several days too much of a wait.

So she sticks to her guns and tries to appear blasé. To care is to betray your age, and to need is to reveal weakness.

When and if he does call, she will respond politely and pleasantly. She will not be disappointed if he has to go after a minute, and she will never admit that she was pining for him while he was gone.

After all, she doesn’t want to undo months of erasing his memory of her age. He must not be reminded of her young, frustratingly-pure love, her desperate need to please him and bend to mirror his being so as to project a pleasing image in return.

To break character is to remind him of that filthy word associated with what she has to offer—youth.

She isn’t getting any younger though, she says, ever the optimist.

- - - - - - - - - -

Oh, you stupid young people. You foolish, raw seedlings. What makes you so irresistable also paves your downfall.

You’re serving up your brand of affection, only no one’s ordering that dish. No one takes their love neat these days; it’s more fashionable with a twist of lime or diluted with a dash of water. And some want it on the rocks, too.