The Art of Loving so Freely

“Whatever I’ve done

                                                   I did it for love

                                                    I did it for fun.”

One More Hour by Tame Impala

There’s something magical about falling in love, giving it your all, being so carefree, with your guard down. At least that was the case for me. There’s something beautiful that happens when you enter a situation willingly and knowingly. Letting yourself fall off a cliff, not expecting a net at the end of the jump. There’s something so freeing about knowing the risks and yet being able to allow yourself to love, purely because you can and you want to. This was the case for me this year when I decided to set myself free from the shackles of worry.

“If it happens, it happens.

Worst case scenario, it’ll be a lesson.”

That’s what I told myself when I decided to send an email to this guy that I gained interest in, back in March this year. However, I wasn’t always that bold. To be more specific, that was the first time I actually stepped out of my comfort zone to be bold enough to send an email to a guy, I had chatted like once or twice with, mind you, this guy was a stranger. Prior to sending that email where I showed interest in pursuing a friendship with him, I was scared; scared of rejection, embarrassment and trying something new. It took some push from a close friend of mine in order for me to do it. She told me:

 “YOLO.

                                                                            Just do it for the plot.”

And truly, that was the final push I needed. I sent him the email. I don’t remember how long it took but I did receive a response and after that we started to chat through emails. It was a thrilling experience for me as a 15-year-old. It felt special for multiple reasons, firstly, it isn’t common for teens to communicate using email so that he was responding using email when he could’ve just ignored, secondly, it was something new so that added to the thrill and thirdly, there was just something about waiting for those midnight emails to arrive. Since young, I’ve been a hopeless romantic, however for this experience I tried to maintain a pretty level headed mindset. This was supposed to be an experience, an experiment, and not all experiments went well so I was aware that I could get burnt during this experiment, but that didn’t scare me, it just added to the thrill. I was aware that me and this guy couldn’t date, but that didn’t stop me. I knew what I wanted, and he was not what I wanted, but I still flirted with him. He noticed it, but didn’t stop me. He wanted to meet, I wasn’t against that. He never made plans, I never asked. I had made the first move and damned would I be if I made all the moves. I wanted to be yearned for too. He said the first “I love you”, I replied “I love you more”. We were both lying, but it didn’t bother me. He asked me to prove it, I wrote a word-doc page on why I loved him. His proof? He’d show it through a kiss. I didn’t want a kiss. We had different love languages. I trolled him, asked questions, and pushed his buttons. I had an idea of who he was. But, I doubt he even knew my name. That was a bitter truth, but I didn’t mind. It’s not like I wanted a relationship. I was satisfied with the situation. We weren’t ready for commitment. I wondered if he had some other girl he frequently texted, in the morning, during daytime and right before sleep. I knew I wasn’t the one he wanted. Yet, I didn’t care, because I loved being in that state where I just loved freely, where I wrote pages reminiscing about what I like about him, what I learned about him, why I liked him, and how I was going to annoy him. The only times I seeped his mind were probably the moments when he couldn’t sleep in the middle of night. He had some sort of insomnia. He was living in a foster house, with his brother. He looked like a twenty-something-year-old and was insecure about it. We never discussed looks. He was going to move to the city during the summer. He told me about where he wanted to study. He did e-sport and had like 1k followers on insta and TikTok. I had gone through his reposts on TikTok, and his socials when we first chatted, that’s where I found his g-mail. He did photography on insta and was really into cars. He was Romanian and Christian. His name was Christian. He had an ex, she meant a lot for him and their break-up went tough on him. First June, I blocked him on insta. It was a fun experiment, but I knew we couldn’t go further and neither did I want to. Those months I chatted to him were a mix of torture and thrill. Sixteen days before my sixteenth birthday, I kicked him out of my life. And I thought that was it.

“A girl could dream, no?”

Well no.

Three months later, during fall break, I downloaded the app we had met on, again, out of boredom and he slid in my dm. I replied, we chatted shortly about how we were doing and the high schools we ended up in. He then asked if I had feelings still, I replied truthfully, no. Two months after I had blocked him, I had come to the realization that I liked him and I wasn’t scared to let him know. Him? He had some? He was giving mixed signals. We started chatting on snap, but within that week, I knew he was just keeping me as a roster. I had an intuition and this time I did mind him having someone he wanted yet keeping me as a backup. I asked straightforwardly, he didn’t know? I blocked. The headache was finally gone. A month later he had a girl. That hurt. I felt like I was tainted. That’s when I vowed that I’d never ever again, love so freely as I did. I don’t regret the past. I am happy with the experience I got. This experiment didn’t go well, and I did get burnt, so for the time being I'll stay away from more experiments. However, what a privilege to love so freely, without anything holding you back? Did I truly love him though?

“Even if it didn’t go well,

It was something and will be remembered as so.”