first love I still remember looking into his eyes. The last I saw of them was when I took down the picture of us on the day when we first kissed. I had met him on the Internet. People say that love on the Internet is created by each person's ideal perception. I never quite understood that until he said that he did not want to see me anymore. I first met him when I was a road trip that happened to be passing through his city. He had never seen my picture and I had never seen his. We had only seen pictures of us when we were young. On the way to the agreed meeting place, I kept telling myself that he was only a friend--that he would never be my lover. From previous instances, I knew that my usual overinfautation aka major crushes caused too much heartbreak. I would not allow myself to be hurt. I got out of the car and saw him. His sunglasses glistened. His hair was gelled, just like he said it was going to be. He was simply beautiful. I could not say that it was love at first sight, but rather a glimpse into what three years of friendship could become. After that, we suddenly started talking to each other every day on the Internet. Before, we had e-mailed each other 50k messages, never complaining that we had too much work to write back. Now, we messaged each other with replies almost several pages long. I was in the freshman year of college. He was a senior in high school. My friends made fun of me of being good friends with a younger guy. Nonetheless, over the course of a few months, I began having strong feelings for him. There was one time that I called him. I wanted to tell him about the feelings that I could not describe. I wanted to say that he was the one for me. Instead, I became so nervous that I cried. He listened to me rant about random things, but I still could not tell him. He visited me during Thanksgiving. We spent several days together visiting the city like tourists. My sister and her boyfriend were tagging along. They were holding hands. I looked at them, and longed for what they had. I looked at him. We joked about getting married and talked into the late hours. At the bus station, we sat with our backs together in sad silence. I asked him what he was thinking. He turned toward me and said, "You know that quote from Jerry Maguire?" I shook my head. "You complete me." I was taken aback and murmured something about how my friend knew that I liked him. We hugged. I took a step back and looked at him, almost brushing his cheek. We hugged again. Then I had to go. I turned around once and saw him looking at the floor. Afterwards, we analyzed that moment over and over. We talked about how I would visit him in December, right before Christmas. Somehow I felt that we were growing closer. When I saw him again, I tried suppressing my feelings. I did not want to be disappointed. I had prepared a perfect gift. My sister had ridiculed me for getting such a gift, but I was determined to give it to him. I was going to give him a box of Hershey's kisses coupled with my own kiss on his lips. Each night, I would gather the courage, but somehow I became a coward. On the last day, we spent an afternoon at a boardwalk. We kept grabbing each other's hand to see whether we were cold or not. We leaned against a wooden rail. He put his camera at arm length and took a picture of us. His eyes glimmered. When we returned to his house, I decided that it was time to give him my Christmas present. I pulled it out of my backpack when he was not looking and gave it to him. He looked confused as he peered inside. I courageously said, "No, it's like this." I turned toward him, but he turned away. My courage disappeared. I gave up and went to the bathroom. When I came back, he was sitting on the floor staring at my suitcase. I knelt down to get something from my bag and he put his head on my shoulder affectionately. I leaned back and rested softly in his body. And we kissed. "The movie of us is not finished yet," he said at the airport. There are many times that you wake up and you think that the previous few days was only a dream. Only because you are in your bed now, back to familiarity. The same walls, the same sun. All the same before you had the dream. But you remember being somewhere else. You remember the moments the day before. You remember the emotions. The physical intensity. The gentle quietly laughing nudges he made when you had whipped cream on your upper lip. Then that is when you realize it all has been real. Do you smile and fall back into bed? A satisfying moment when you think life is good, almost perfect. Or do you rush yourself into nostalgia? Aching for those moments to repeat again. The days after when we were again 500 miles apart, we mourned our distance. Then one day, he told me he loved me. I loved him. Those were the happy days. We created pictures for each other. On New Year's, we counted down the seconds on the phone and gave a kiss in the air for each other. Suddenly, on the first day that I had returned to my dorm, he became suddenly sensitive to my joking. He told me that he was hurt by my words. He told me that I reminded him of his mother. I cried for hours that night. The following day, I refused to move from my bed for seven hours although I was awake. I started my semester that way. Eventually, I forgave him and he forgave me. He came up to see the weekend before Valentine's Day. For the first time, we held hands like we did not want to let each other go. Over time, I became insecure in our relationship. He became more insensitive to my anxieties. We argued more. I became psychotic during those episodes, taking sides in issues that I would normally never take. He came up to visit me during his spring break. He was insensitive to my concerns. I cried in front of him for the first time. He barely touched me. We only kissed four times that week. Afterwards, he starting talking about how he wanted independence and how he wanted more time to devote to himself. I began feeling lonely. He did not seem to understand. We decided to take a break from each other. I could not bare the sudden loneliness and kept sending him messages. He did not respond. Then one day, I finally asked him what he had concluded. He concluded that he did not want to see me anymore. He was not interested in a love relationship with me. He did not want me to go to his prom with him. I was hurt. I was heartbroken. I asked him if he felt anything and he said "none". I cried for days after that. Whenever I was alone, I would scream in frustration and let tears fall down my cheeks. I would stare at the spot where he had slept. My friends became concerned for me. By the end of the week, my friends had convinced me that I had to move on. I had my sister take down the picture of us at the boardwalk. The picture that had emphasized his glimmering eyes. My sister put up her painting of bamboo in the empty space. My dorm neighbor Stuart stopped me as I was going into my room. I was still dead, unfeeling now from the breakup. "You and Alan look great together," he said. I gulped. I asked him how did he know. "Oh I just know," Stuart smiled. I wore sunglasses almost every day. I did not want anybody to know about my grief. It seemed as if I was not supposed to suffer this much. So I wore sunglasses to hide my face. Sometimes I walked around campus, crying behind those shades. Nobody could see those tears hidden behind dark shadows. He does not talk to me anymore although he is online. It is as if our friendship and love relationship never existed. I knew him the longest of everybody outside my family. I still miss the glimmering eyes. The eyes of Alan that were etched in my mind for a mere four months. • bio home • • back to home •