A Confusing Entry
That night--as we drove home from university--I told him about her and he listened intently.She was my girlfriend for three months and has been my ex-girlfriend for the past nine. He knew all about what happened. He knew understood why my relationship didn't work out a lot more than I did. He had been my bestfriend for the past few years and I knew that if there was someone who would understand, it would be him. I was confused and perhaps (just perhaps) he who tended to see things from many different perspectives could help me clear a path to the right thing to do.
I told him that I was thinking of getting back together with her. I told him that I had begun to realize that the bad things that happened to us prior to and right after our break up had clouded my perception of her. I told him that I felt bad that the moment that the romance waned, I gave up on us. I told him that I felt even worse for making it as clear as day to her that everything that caused the collapse of our relationship came from her. I told him that I was seriously thinking of giving it another chance.
It's probably clear right off the bat that I regretted a lot of the things that happened between her and me. I regretted giving up on our relationship without a fight. I regretted making her feel like the scum of the earth. I regretted losing time with her by holding a grudge and not even trying to restore our friendship. The regrets were weighing me down, I told him.
He was quiet for a very long while.
Right after my break up, he had told me that he had seen that I was still too naive and--he had claimed to have said this with the most affection--selfish to commit myself to such a relationship. He had told me that both she and I were not ready for our relationship for different reasons. He had told me that if he had told me these things before I asked her to go steady with me, I would have brushed it off because of my then overly romantic view of the world.
He never said we weren't compatible.
And by the time he finally spoke, he didn't discourage me, either. He chose his words carefully as he often did in these kinds of situations. "Date her," his answer was simpler than I expected. "If she wants to, of course," he added as an afterthought. He then proceeded with an explanation, "Dating without commitment would be a good way to reacquaint yourself with her. You're detached enough to make relatively unbiased decisions while she's close enough to you for you to be able to evaluate your feelings for her."
I had thought of that before and was seriously considering it.
"But," he gave me a warning, which I found to be very useful. "Even if she wants to, don't commit just yet. Your feelings aren't very reliable right now. You're confused. Let your state of mind settle before doing anything."
"You know," I brought the discussion back to what was bothering me in the first place. "It's all this guilt and regret I feel for all the things I did to her that makes me sad. I always believed that we should live our lives without regrets..."
"I don't think regrets are all that bad. They make us think twice before we do anything stupid," he said as a small sad smile touched his lips. Even those who have been blessed with wisdom beyond their age like him make mistakes. He had his own regrets, too. "I think what's bad is regretting that you have regrets and dwelling on it."
There was silence as I digested his words. Before I could say anything more, his voice cut through the darkness,"Sorry." He kept his gaze on the road, but I could still read the sincerity in his eyes. "I'm sorry I couldn't help that much."
And, he was right. I couldn't say I felt the weight had been lifted after our conversation that night. He didn't present any clear cut solution to me. He left me to decide for myself.
"Don't be sorry. Don't regret it," I reassured him as I settled back on my seat to contemplate everything that had transpired. I was really grateful he listened intently so I said it: "Thanks."
It was more help than he would ever imagine.
Healing
It was in another place, far from the one we would normally call "our world" that it happened.I had asked you not to act surprised when I told you I had lost her, but you still acted surprised. But, the shock never really reached your eyes, which is probably why you kept them directed away from me when you reacted. It was a painful experience for me. You knew that. You also saw it coming, but showing me that you did might make you seem smug and you knew I didn't need smug at that moment. So, you let me lead you through the alien walkways so we could see the sights of this new world.
As the days passed, you weaned out the details from me, patiently and gently. You never forced anything out. You simply waited until I was ready. You stayed with me in the bars of this foreign land, smiling softly as I spoke, sympathizing as I mourned, and diverting my attentions with your own stories whenever I needed a rest. You never went as far as licking my wounds and taking my side. On the contrary, you tried to help me understand her. Learning to forgive is much better than learning to hate, was what you said as we ate in that quaint little restaurant near our hotel. It seemed as if you knew everything that I needed. You listened and learned about me and you soothed my pain. Despite the time it took, despite the rumors it provoked, despite the risks that you had to take. We were experiencing a new world that we entered as friends: me as a heartbroken man and you as a skittish but curious child.
As I explore the shops with you, it comes to mind that I never realized before how comforting you could be. You're always so naive and lost on normal days that I never imagined me sitting here with you, seeking your protection from the pain she had caused me.
Now, as I watch you stirring your drink idly with your straw, I notice for the first time the little things I had not given much thought of before. This whole new place that we are in scares you as much as it fascinates you. I was opening doors for you that you didn't want opened. But you went through all that for me.
But then, as always, you knew the end of things. This was one world we could never bring with us home.
And suddenly, all the wounds open once more.
Quantum Mechanics
It wasn't unusual for him to find her standing in the hallway of their institute, staring out of the windows and at the stars. It was actually closer to dawn than to the previous day's afternoon, but seeing her there didn't surprise him anymore. She often did that after long hours of research work in order to clear her mind and relax herself. He knew she was well aware of his presence despite the shadows hiding him.
"Sometimes, if you know the origin of a problem, it's easy to find a solution for it," she told him. She then redirected her attention from the sky to him and smiled sweetly. The dark circles under her eyes were a dead give away of how exhausted the exceptionally long day had left her. He imagined her computer in their laboratory, still turned on, running the calculations she had programmed it to run.
He walked over to her side. "But in the end, you still have to reexamine your solution and think if it is suitable for the situation that started the problem." He wondered if she was just talking about her research. It was rare that her words weren't pregnant with thoughts far beyond the science that they so often contemplated on.
She laughed shortly. "Yes, you're right," she replied. She looked him straight in the eye, "Why are you still up?" she asked.
"I woke up at around midnight. Can't sleep yet," he answered. He tried to read the expression on her face, but it was perfectly masked even as she searched his gaze. "What about you?"
"Oh, just thinking," she tilted her head and rested her cheek on her hand. "I'll be heading off to bed in a while, I imagine."
"Sometimes, the more you think about something, the more complicated it becomes," he reasoned out.
She laughed. "I'm well aware of that. But sometimes things get clearer..." there was a hitch in her voice and she glanced at the ground and he noticed that she did this to hide what little emotion she was unable to contain. "...as they did tonight."
He watched her curiously as she returned to what seemed to be counting the stars. There was a dullness to her eyes that told him she wasn't just physically tired.
"Problems that involve feelings are a lot like Quantum Mechanics," she told him, her voice breaking into his thoughts. There was an unreadable smile on her face that made him wonder if she was joking or not. "It's either there are no exact solutions for them or there is not enough information about them."
She was speaking in terms that were familiar to both of them. Physics. This way, she didn't have to give anything too explicit away if she wasn't joking, and it would be an interesting discussion if that was all she was after. He decided to work with the latter of his reasoning. "Like I said, you have to look at the appropriateness of the solution to the problem. Is the wave function well behaved and normalized?"
"I suppose I could use the perturbation theory, but the resulting differential equation is stiff to solve," she was pensive. They could pretend that nothing was wrong and try to resolve the problem while they lived their lives normally. "The function is rather well-behaved, but very sensitive to initial conditions." But, as with all volatile situations, even if their relationships weren't erratic and progressed steadily, the direction the relationship was headed relied heavily on where the situation started.
He found himself amused by the discussion. "You see, if the perturbing potential is large compared to the unperturbed Hamiltonian, the perturbation theory won't work." At the same time, he found that he was beginning to understand what she was talking about. If the problem was too large, there was no way that their lives could be lived as if there were no problems. That solution wouldn't work. "You should try WKB or the variation principle."
"I suppose you're right," she said. "If one method doesn't work, it would be wise to try another. But, at the same time, we still have to accept that we're working with approximations."
"Problems in Quantum Mechanics are a lot like problems that involve feelings," he finally stated. "Sometimes, there are no exact solutions. Approximating a solution is the last option and all we can do is make sure that we minimize the error."
She laughed softly, having her own analogy thrown back at her. She turned to him, the dullness still there, but the smile on her face touching her eyes almost imperceptibly. "That's true."
"It's getting late. The sun could rise on us," he pointed out the purplish sky.
"You're right," she wiped her glasses clean. "We should get some sleep."
"Yeah."
"Thanks."
"Goodnight."
Angels
It was days like this that he regretted accepting his role as a brilliant mind. Sometimes, life in school as smart and responsible student really truly--for lack of a better word for it--sucked. It didn't help, of course, that the sky chose that day to rain and his body decided it was time to break down and succumb to a fever. With his entire day stock-full of research work and classes ahead of him, it was all he could do to collapse onto one of the benches in their favorite hang-out and pass out.
It had been a familiar voice chirpily greeting everyone in the room that made him stir. It was the hushed conversations that made him think seriously about getting up. But, it was the gentle hand feeling his forehead that finally got him to open his eyes.
And then he saw an angel.
"I'm sorry, did I wake you?" said angel spoke in the voice of one of his closest friends.
He blinked. It was either the angel or his friend, it couldn't be both. The illusion faded, he realized that the one sitting beside him with a concerned look on her face was indeed the latter. "Yeah," he muttered as he pushed himself up to a sitting position.
"Your next class starts in a few minutes," she informed him as she sat on the fraction of the bench he had vacated by sitting. She touches his forehead again. "You're a bit clammy to the touch, are you going?"
He turned to her to answer, but was temporarily taken aback by how the morning light decided to make her look ethereal. She patiently waited for his reponse, the worry in her doe eyes so readable. "Yeah," he managed to say as he recanted his earlier statement to himself. An angel or his friend, yes, it could actually be both.
Forced Revelation
It wasn't her idea when he found out. People just had an almost cruel way of jesting her into doing things she didn't want to do. She had cried about it as often as she laughed about it, but they seemed to be aware of only the latter.
He was just her type--strange, not overly good-looking, and nice in a weird sort of way. She wasn't his. He liked slender beautiful girls with smooth silken white skin and a mild personality. That girl was everything she was not. She was well aware of that. That was why she knew that it was pointless to tell him how she felt.
But, they made her do it. Oh, the very people she called her friends could be so cruel sometimes.
