love in a box

Some time in 2008, my mother told me that she decided to put all her love for me into a box. Distance, priorities, and growing cultural barriers have pulled us further and further apart. It came to a point when she realized that the intensity of her love could be suffocating, and that it would eventually, if not already, lose its relevance to me and become just a footnote. She roughly said:

Son, I have so much, so much love for you, but I will put all of it into a box. I will close the box, and then hide it somewhere. Nobody but me will know where it is. When I am lonely, or when I am too old to remember, I will go find it and look inside. It's like my little treasure box that no one knows about.

Earlier today, I found myself writing to someone that maybe I should put all my feelings for her into a box. I didn't use the word "love," because I knew it was only real to me. It is a different kind of love, but the kind that is most important to me at the moment. I was given the impression that this love is not real, has never been relevant, and should never have existed. I thought, that if my love was such a nuisance, I should probably just keep it to myself.

Having the image of a box on my mind, I naturally remembered my little treasure box. It contained physical evidence of some old memories, consisting of movie stubs, receipts, scribbles, short notes, hand-written letters, pieces of paper with contact information, and all other sorts of miscellaneous writings. The truth, however, is that none of them matters anymore. If anything, they only remind me of a period of time during which I was desperate for attention. There is exactly one person in this universe who has gone through the contents of this box with me. She also happens to be the only person with whom I'd ever want to look through this box and smile together. Since the contents had done their purpose, I proceeded with clean-up.


As I started, I soon realized that I would not be tearing everything apart, as there were items such as filmmaker autographs and the receipt for my sword that I should probably keep.


At the end, as the box finally became empty, it occurred to me that hiding my love into this tiny box would be an ultimate act of untruthfulness. First of all, it has never been my style to hide my feelings, and secondly, how could I hide something as vast as that which affects all aspects of my life and touches upon different parts of my personal history? Once upon a December, someone asked me, "What drives you?" I wanted to answer that it was unquestionably the ability to love someone, whether that love was reciprocated or not. I feel this tremendous source of energy. It drives me, motivates me, and enchants everything that I do. Love is in me. To say that it never happened is basically to suggest I never existed.

But then again, it comes to a point where everything that matters to me matters to no one else but me. I cannot convince people how I feel, and the harder I try, the more misunderstanding there will be. It hurts so much to be misunderstood - the greatest bane of my existence. Nevertheless, at the end of the day I will be content that I have found the love I had been seeking all this time. I feel that I have not lived in vain, and that everything that has happened had to happen for me to find this person. Even though I could never express this love the way I once wished for, I have discovered a great friendship - without doubt the greatest of all. On that note, I rest my case. With all the powerful energy left, I will learn to control it, and use it; I will carry myself through to whatever end and wherever I get my purpose fulfilled. Between the one I love and I, if there could be only one person to end up truly happy, then I want that person to be her.