Small steps

Early in the morning, waiting in my cellphone inbox was a message from a friend that read, “I love you, ha!”.

I read this as soon as I got up from bed to check my messages. That text brought a smile in my face and served as reminder that people like my friend still exist.

This friend of mine just wanted to remind me, platonically, that she loves me. And that’s it. That’s just what she needs me to feel. That she loves me. Knowing her, she probably thought, “I need to remind my friend that I love him.”

In this fast-paced, cynical, sarcastic world we live in, saying ‘I love you’ unexpectedly, just like what my friend did, can melt the icebergs wrapped around the coldest of hearts.

Years ago, I must admit, that majestic sunsets can make me sniffle and my niece’s cute socks can make me cry (and I don’t know why). But after some crappy quarter-life experiences, it’s hard to feel any poignant sentiment towards anything lately. I even took down my social networking accounts, for crying out loud, because I was too “annoyed” and fed up with everyone’s heart’s outpouring, dismissing them as irrelevant (see previous blog entry “Hi Friend”). This just showed how cynical and indifferent I got.

Until that text.

That text slightly opened my heart again and got me thinking about ‘last times’.

When was the last time I really enjoyed a sunset? Or a sunrise?

When was the last time I hugged a friend who needed it?

When was the last time I enjoyed a dessert or a carb-rich dish without obsessing how many push-ups it would require me to burn it afterwards?

When did was the last time I listened to a friend’s story without making judgments even before he or she finishes telling it?

When did saying ‘I love you’ start being so hard and gauche, or even unreservedly callow?

And when did it start being OK to use the thesaurus?

Oh, I’m sorry about that last one.

But seriously, all these musings alarmed me about how far I’ve driven myself in the negative spectrum just to feel safe.   

When did I become so in a hurry?

When did I stopped enjoying myself?

When did I become so guarded?

When did I stop letting people in?

After a short while, I replied to my friend, “I love you, too” and got ready to start another day at work, hopeful that I’d be able to put the answers to those hard questions in action. One step at a time.