All my life I have been memorising and understanding people, with or without intentions. I just let myself do it and as I follow the flow of my life, I realized I have been looking out for people more than I should be. I don’t understand how to stop it and maybe at the same time, I don’t want it to stop, because truthfully, I like observing and learning people. I love acknowledging others, besides, just like what the famous saying goes, to be loved is to be known. People are different despite having the same blood shared, even if you are identical twins and basically the same person to one another, or when you share the same experiences between each other. People are totally different in their perspectives and preferences. Knowing that fact, keeps me interested to always learn something about someone.
Due to people being different, I tend to observe each and everyone of them, carefully. Despite only meeting people for a few times, I have successfully picked up the little things that they do as a habit, their likes, or simply their do’s and don’ts. I’d like to think that having this thing of liking to observe and learn people is my form of way of loving someone, but is it really loving if I am the only one making efforts to discover them while in return, I was never understood by any of them?
“She can’t eat chickens and drink milk. She’s allergic to chicken and has lactose intolerance.” I said that when I was 15 about a friend of mine when I went on a school trip with my schoolmates and they were about to order chicken and milk. She was in awed and was thankful because I remembered that eventhough she never really verbally say it to anyone, but today, I am no longer friends with her. I know how much she adores Mark Lee, but she never know how much Haechan means to me. I know all her favourite food and music, but she doesn’t even know what’s my hobbies.
“He often shower his younger sister with love more than his younger brother, simply because she’s attached to him more than anyone in his siblings.” I said that to my friends about someone I was not even in a relationship with, but something was certainly going on. We no longer communicate with each other despite having each other’s contacts now. I know everything about his family while he doesn’t even know my brother’s name.
For a period of time, I had these thoughts in my head that me being able to memorise and learn people is a blessing from God. Not many people are willing to pay attention to the little things in details about someone but by people’s reactions towards me caring about the smallest, easiest to forget, informations about them, the warm smiles they gave me, it made me feel happy because I know they think that they are loved by me. However, as time passes by, I realized that I have made people feel loved but none of them ever love me back. So, this ability of mine have become a curse. A curse that serves as a reminder that I will forever be the one that shows the loving, never the one who will be receiving the love.
Only few people know what I love and what I dislike to eat, none of the people I know acknowledge my habits or the little details about me. Nobody knows I pick on my thumbs whenever I get nervous so there was no one to stop me from hurting myself. Nobody knows my favourite songs despite I have sing it out loud multiple times, because I have always been the one noticing, never the one being noticed. In short, I could say that, nobody gets me, the way I get most of the people around me. With the way that I read and care for people around me, the tendency to have someone do the same for me keeps on growing because I wonder, If I can look out for people and eventually keep a big love for them in my heart that easily, why can’t others do the same thing to me, for me?
In my lifetime, I have always been the one who remember. For once, can I be the one being remembered? Am I selfish to ask for that? I want to receive my favourite food or flowers on random occasions too, not the one who sends them whenever my friends are in a bad mood. I also want someone to talk to me, “hey, this reminds me of you.” and not the only one who said things like that to people around me. For I am genuinely terrified. If I can’t be remembered during the days I am still breathing and alive, will everyone forget me that easily the moment I die? Will my name not going to be mentioned in anybody’s stories? Will I not serve any reminders? If during this lifetime where I am still inhaling the air from Earth, I have no one who notices and remember even the smallest detail about me, how can there be any stories for people to tell and say, the moment I leave this world?
I’m afraid, I will always be the one who remember, the one who does all the loving, the one who will be the first in noticing, the one who will always giving, but never the one receiving. I often ask myself questions, am I hard to love? Am I difficult to discover? I read people like they are an open book for me to enjoy, but I feel like a closeted shelf to everyone. Perhaps, it’s my fault. Is it really on me? I must be so hard to understand for people to try to get to know me. I wish I was less complicated, maybe then, I could finally learn how it feels like to be loved without the constant need to be asking for it.
written by C,
31052024.
