When Love's Just Right Behind His/Her Shoulder

My dear Filipina friends, the last of the romantics could very well manage the balance of human affection in his/her thoughts. But mind you, that gone-crazy lover would still need some friendly share of common experience to be able to comprehend the secrets of that enslaving fervor. The Pinay world hangs tough along that romantic horizon. If ever she sways her smile towards pragmatism, then the motive could be very well an online shopping for greener emotional intensity. Let us get into the groove that Ms. Marina Zitser relates about Love i n foreign perspective.

She is Behind His Shoulder   By: Marina Zitser     Site: http://www.odessapartments.com

Image by chrisjohnbeckett via Flickr

     In my last sixteen years of living a couple things have changed. I've outgrown my footed "jimmies", my denim overalls, and even a couple of my bedtime buddies (otherwise known as Mickey and Donald). I brush my teeth every day and almost stopped sucking my thumb, which is one of my major achievements up to this date. Probably I will not put this one on my college application as well as some other secret of mine: I fall in love exactly the same way as I did ten years ago, hopelessly, desperately and ... not for long. My love flu lasts approximately two weeks with temperature raising when I see the object of my affection with somebody else and when he is looking at me with this expression on his face that can be equally translated as "who are you?" and "it is you again". 

     After first two days with life-threatening fever I am falling into a comma where I sit near the phone waiting for him to call me and watching for God knows how many times tireless Mr. Butler carrying Scarlett up the giant red staircase. Like a wounded female lion protecting her cubs, I jump on everybody who is trying to use the phone with a roar that can make any predator of the wild proud. The clock ticks, and finally when I understand that I am sentenced to an eternity of unimaginable pain and suffering, when I show all signs of fatigue, exhaustion, disorientation, insomnia and anxiety, HE calls me. I pick up the phone, we talk, we meet, we smile, we laugh, we talk, he calls again and... Have you guessed already? I am getting better! My fever is gone, I don't respond to the phone calls when I watch my favorite episode of "South Park", I find most of his jokes old and tasteless, I sneak out with my cousin to the movies and lie to my hero that I have to get ready for finals. Yes, dear reader, I don't need your "Get Well Soon" card and pathetic balloons anymore! I am completely healed. 

     So how do you call this? Infatuation? For sure it is not love. Then what is Love? Romeo and Juliet? Did I hear you right? Their relationship was electrifying. But it did not last more than a few days and then they're dead. Maybe you have any other ideas? Joe Kort, a Michigan psychotherapist who hosts weekend-long relationship sessions for both single and married people wrote in one of the magazines that this romantic love that we feel for a short period of time is highly addictive and gives us emotional high caused by something called phenyl ethylamine - PEA, for short. Novelty induces the body to create PEA, says Kort. And at best, a real-life love can only be very novel for six to eighteen months. After that, we've got to learn to appreciate the maturing of a relationship.

     Here is another story. Maybe I will lie a little now to make it look more tearful but I need to make a point. Ok, listen. This story happened during World War II in the little village in Siberia. The young woman was waiting for her husband to come home. She checked her mail every day; she looked through the frozen glass of the kitchen window every time when she heard a noise outside. She was crying into her pillow every night when her kids went to sleep feeling with her guts that her husband would never come back. After many months of agony she received a letter from the hospital saying that they had her husband. The guy was burnt beyond recognition, he lost his limbs, and he could not communicate. He required 24/7 care of the professional nurse, so they advised the wife not to come because they think that she would not be able to provide appropriate care in the middle of nowhere for the person who did not even resemble human being anymore. I am sure these people were right, but this woman whose name is lost in the history, packed her suitcase and raced to the train station to see her husband. 

I don't want to put a burden on you explaining what she felt when she saw the guy, who was strong enough to carry her through the yard to the lake during their wedding, in a hospital room covered with bandages, helpless and unrecognizable. She saw his black eyes and smiled. In two days he was already at home surrounded by kids. It is not probably possible to explain you how hard it was to take care of him in the little Russian village without medications and food. But he survived, and only eyes expressed the pain that he felt. Two years passed and once when she was working in the garden, she felt that her heart started beating extremely fast, she turned her head and saw her husband in the military uniform entering the house. That night this big man whose tired feet went through every European country before they reached Berlin, went down on his knees before his barefooted wife. He was sobbing like a child that after so many years of uncertainty and fear he was standing in front of the greatest woman that existed in the world... 

     Ok, I hope you cried because I did. So was it love? Was it? Guys, I dragged you from the sunny California to Siberia for some reason. I wanted to show you that love is something different from what I felt when I was hypnotizing the phone in my bedroom. Yes, maybe it was love in that house near the lake in the old village with the weird name Sosnovka, but maybe not. It could be duty, respect, honesty...but not love. 

     Love does not have any signs. I wish it had. It could be black and red, it could be loud or silent, it could be sick or healthy, dressed in a million words or blind and poor like a homeless old guy begging for a change near the church. And even when we meet Ms. Love face-to-face we will not recognize her. And if somebody, calls you in the middle of the night promising that he can get for you a star from the sky, just listen to him, give him a chance. Maybe Ms. Love is quietly standing behind his shoulder while he is nervously explaining you that he needs you more than anything in the world. It could be that simple.
                    About the author: Marina Zitser, I love to write, travel and meet new people. Apartments in Odessa 

Now, who says the strong and lovable Pinay holds an exclusive expertise for patience and sacrifice? The world abounds with Love's parallelism. Any race could jump right on it. Love's craze and folly could be just right behind the shoulder...Or maybe it's just the right thing to do and be.