Monday, March 26, 2007

Manic Monday #7: Spring

Alas! the love of women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing;
For all of theirs upon that die is thrown,
And if 'tis lost, life hath no more to bring
To them but mockeries of the past alone,
And their revenge is as the tiger's spring,
Deadly, and quick, and crushing; yet, as real
Torture is theirs, what they inflict they feel.
-From Lord Byron's "Don Juan"


Byron said that a woman's love is both beautiful and dangerous, and woe to the man who trifles with that love because she's going to exact her vengeance on him, even though it's going to hurt her too. What a romantic image this passage evokes: that of a woman scorned and, blinded by pain and anger, unsheathes her claws to emasculate he who hurt her, to claim glorious retribution for the slight committed against her -- even though she might hurt all the more because of it. I love Byron's poetry, but does what he wrote ever happen in real life? Well, sure it does, sometimes. Remember Lorena Bobbitt? (I can imagine men clutching at their thingies while cringing at the memory of what she did to John Wayne Bobbitt.)

Well, this Manic Monday post is a true story about a woman scorned.

That's stretching it a bit though; she could hardly be called a woman because she was just a teenager then. Nevertheless, she fell in love, and she loved her boy with all the love that her little teenage heart was capable of producing. Sadly, he only felt the same way only a short time (if he ever did) because he dumped her for another girl. Our protagonist took it quite well, all things considered. Sure, she cried for days at a time. Then she went through an extended fit of anger, holding late-night powwow sessions with the girlfriends to dream up the most exquisite ways of torturing the ex and making him suffer.

But after the initial period of tears and anger, things settled down and she accepted things well enough to start communicating with the ex once more. They became, if not quite friends, at least good acquaintances again. Sometimes they'd go out or just spend time sitting around, talking and laughing. She spent her 18th birthday with him; he took her out to dinner and they went dancing afterwards (a mark of the depth of her feelings for him because she doesn't like to dance in public). She saw once again all the things about him that captured her (such as his wit and his effortless dancing) and even though she enjoyed the evening, behind the laughter a thought flitted subtly through her mind like a threatening undercurrent: Someday you are going to regret what you did. You'll be sorry you ever let me go.

Fast forward to a dozen years or so. Our erstwhile teenage female is a teenager no longer. She is standing on a corner in one of the city's shopping districts, trying to hail a taxi--which is damn near impossible during rush hour. Then she hears someone calling her name. A voice she hasn't heard in years. A ghost from the past. She turns slowly, as if in a dream, and sees the ex.

She is speechless, watching helplessly as he approaches her with the easy gait she remembers he always had. The words "Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit" run like a mantra through her mind. He is looking as good as he ever did. She, on the other hand, is feeling hot, sweaty, tired, and a wee bit grumpy. Her arms are aching from all the bags she's carrying. To top it all off... she's heavily pregnant. And she doesn't look remotely anything like those gloriously pregnant women you see in works of art. Oh, no. Let's just say that if a film producer was looking to cast a female Asian Moby Dick, she wouldn't have had to audition and she would've aced the role. Also, she had the thick ankles that Moby Dick didn't.

The ex reaches her side and while he's smiling and making pleasant chit-chat, his eyes are all but shouting "WTF happened to you?"

Someone up there sure has a sick sense of humor sometimes. Why, oh why, couldn't their paths have crossed again when she was svelte and had dainty ankles? Why did he have to chance upon her at the moment when her svelte self was buried deep beneath the flesh-and-blood incarnation of a Sherman tank?

Since her most ardent prayers for the earth to open up and swallow her are being ignored, she does the only thing she can do, which is to smile and make some pleasant conversation back. And all the while thinking: "Byron, you young romantic nincompoop. You were so full of crap."

There was no avenging tiger in evidence that day. Just one despondent whale.

28 comments:

BeckEye said...

Great story. It actually reminded me of my own situation with my "first love" for the first couple of paragraphs!

Anonymous said...

I have not have the chance to meet up with my first love though I tried to. Not that it will make a difference when we did not even started dating
Oh, how I wish to see her again
Love itself is wonderful and dangerous, not only women
:)

ShadowFalcon said...

Such is life, you should laugh but I think I would have cried.

Sometimes there is no justice, which is why I hide under tables when I see n ex

Alice (in BC Canada) said...

very interesting stories. Have a happy spring.

houseband00 said...

Nanliit ako sa kwento mo, Liz. =)

Hayup!

H said...

awww. the ex is obviously an insensitive baboon if his eyes were screaming out all those things.

I'd like to see him carry a baby in his little baby-making sacs - and watch his delicate ankles as they swing past his toes everytime he'd walk.

No. A man isn't worth the effort if that's how he's going to react when any woman he's cared about or cares about gets pregnant. He doesn't deserve the scorn.

Anonymous said...

Beckeye: Thanks. I hope it brought back good memories. :-)

ZI: Haha! I hope you see her again too.

Shadowfalcon: I was caught unawares. If I'd seen him first, I would've hightailed it out of there.

Alice: Thanks! Happy spring to you.

HB: Aha! Siguro ginanyan mo din ang ex mo ano? Hayup talaga kayong mga lalake. :-)

H: Carry a baby in his little baby-making sacs, haha! Thanks for the visual, soul sis. I can laugh about it now. It was an experience I'll remember. :-)

Sandee said...

Wow, I was waiting for blood, gore, and death. I wasn't expecting the end. Great job.

Danielle said...

Our love comes from the depths and there is the fine line between love and hate. I wouldn't want to see my first show up, it would probably mean he was stalking me.
The avenging tiger would be your moving forth and creating life and your life and not being held back by misguided love.

Tammie Jean said...

"You'll be sorry you ever let me go." We have all thought that at some point in our dating careers, haven't we? I can definitely relate!

Odat said...

Damn...I hate when that happens...lol...great post tho..thanks for sharing.
Peace

the not so "new" mom on the blog said...

Hi Lizza, Awwww that was a great story!!!!! Hope you are keeping well - I have not been around lately and I can see that I have missed lots!!!!

Natalia said...

Ahhhh love. First loves. Last loves.

-N

Kiyotoe said...

aww man, I thought she was going to be drop dead gorgeous and he was going to beg her for her phone number and she was going to make him kiss her feet before she gave it to him and then...........

Oops, got caried away again. Sorry.

Bud Weiser, WTIT said...

The final chapter might not have been written. Have you considered that?

GREAT post!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful story. I'm rooting for the whale. BTW, half a world away, I can relate to Byron's quote and your touching story. If only you knew, Lizza.

CS said...

Sometimes what we think we see in someone's eyes is just a reflection. I know the feeling, but remember he's the one who called out and approached.

Unknown said...

Excellent, Lizza! I love the end (especially)...

Glad you enjoyed my cruise posts!

Travis Cody said...

Sometimes life just sucks, and then you go get rocky road ice cream.

Michael C said...

What a wonderfully told story. The girls prayers about the earth opening up did come true, however. About that same time I fell into a huge hole and was stuck there for days. Isn't it funny how prayers are answered...

Scott from Oregon said...

The good news is that she was pregnantly heavy.

Here was his chance to see real beauty and he apparently missed it.

Lizza said...

comedy+: Blood, gore, and death would've been magnificent. Sadly, our heroine is a wuss. Thanks for stopping by. :-)

Danielle: Misguided love, hmmm. That's a thought-provoking concept. That former teenager has moved on, she just felt silly and inadequate that one time. :-)

Tammie: Payback time? :-D Funny stuff we thought about when we were younger.

Odat: Et tu? ;-) Peace!

Natalia: For some people they're the same thing. :-)

Kiyotoe: Get carried away, do! You're the scriptwriter here. :-)

Bud: Oh, it has. :-) Thanks!

Gem: Thanks. And I hope you tell your story someday.

CSL: You're right. Sometimes the reflection is good, sometimes it isn't.

Sanni: Thanks! Hats off to you, you really put a lot of heart and soul into your cruise posts.

Travis: True, true. Except I don't like nuts in my ice cream. So I'll get plain chocolate instead. :-)

Michael: Maybe your need to be swallowed by the earth was greater than the girl's. :-D

Lizza said...

NMOTB: Welcome back! So good to see you here again. Everything's fine. Hope you're keeping well, too.

Scott: As they say, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Prometheus said...

Speechless! That's what Prometheus is.

Anonymous said...

I also agree-great story.

Who hasn't run upon an ex on an especially bad day and regretted it? The good thing about this story is the dude saw our girl in all of her glory: she's moved on to someone she wants to have children with and her burgeoning belly is that symbol of love.

He's now wondering if he made the right decision to leave her.

Debo Blue

Anonymous said...

Prometheus: Why art thou speechless? Did you do the same thing to one of your exes? ;-)
This story happened a long time ago.

Debo Blue: That would've been a nice twist. But methinks it was just a chance passing, and neither he nor she (especially he) placed too much importance on it.

Liz Hill said...

Awesome post sugar--been there done that got the t shirt. Although I wasn't preggers I felt unbelievably unatractive. All that crap has been sorted though--now where did I leave my mattock?
;-)

Lizza said...

I misplaced my mattock too. Let me borrow yours when you find it, ok? ;-)