“You can’t really force it, cause I’ve tried, and it never works. You may have an idea, but it’s usually not the one you want…” -Sam Woolf

For when a heart insists on it’s destiny, resisting the general blandishment, then the agony is great; so too the danger. Forces, however, will have been set in motion beyond the reckoning of the senses. Sequences of events from the corners of the world will draw gradually together, and miracles of coincidence bring the inevitable to pass.

-Joseph Campbell

“How long have you two been dating?” Angelie asks Cece.

“Four months. We’ve been taking it slow. He’s the one Gigi,” Cece tells her.

“So how was your date the other day?”

“Oh, that was with someone else.”

“Wait, but isn’t Charlie the one for you?”

“Yeah, but I’m just dating as a space filler to pass on the days.”

Angelie heard herself in this situation. About 18 months ago, she was in the same exact position. She has found the one, but she was also dating men as space fillers. And it backfired.

Angelie wanted to warn Cece, but she knew it was all about approach.

“Cece, I have something to confess.”
“Yeah?”

“I had fallen in love with a man a year and a half back, and we hooked up quick. It also ended quick.”

“Why?”

“I had anxiety attacks around him. I was terrified of the depth of love and passion I have for him, so much that I subconsciously sabotaged it.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him that I’d like to take it slow so withheld my body from him after I had already given it to him, then had a drunken one night stand with a stranger, and told him about it.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, I was trying to sabotage it because I couldn’t forgive him for what he did with his ex because it was the same unforgiveness I still had with my ex.”

The ride from the airport to Angelie’s Airbnb place in Provo, Utah was a long one. Cece was gushing about Charlie the entire hour-long trip. It hit Angelie how patient and kind her Korean friend, Ryu, was when Angelie was gushing about Derrick throughout their friendship back in college. Cece came off self-absorbed, self-centered, and selfish, and it hit Angelie how alike they both were.

“We made out the first night. We met at the Sonic Conference, and he came at me 6’4 and asked me if I wanted to have lunch with him. He had these dark shades on and when he finally took them off when we were sitting down for lunch, that’s when I fell in love with him. It was his eyes,” Cece gushed.

Something in Angelie stirred. It was exactly the way she had fallen for Branson. It was looking into his eyes. A slight longing tugged at her heart, but she remained mum about this insight because mostly she was annoyed at how talkative and self-absorbed her friend, Cece, was about her love obsession.

Love Addiction

Addiction is a coercive force that keeps the soul trapped by creating an action on repeat, like Desmond, the character, in the show, Lost, who keeps pushing the button to recycle the countdown because he was told that if the countdown went to zero and if he didn’t push the button, a nuclear missile will kill millions. That need to keep pushing the button on repeat, and staying stuck in the bunker where he had to push the button, is the suffering of addiction.

Perhaps, loving Branson was a love addiction, but then again, if one truly is a love addict, then how does one figure out if something is true love or if it is a love addiction?

Perhaps it comes down to force. If one has to force something to happen, then it’s a love addiction, and if one just allows, and it flows smoothly like a leaf gliding downstream with gravity, then it is love.

Reflecting back, Angelie accepts that their attraction was true love, but the inability to forgive their respective past and the love avoidance was an addiction. The love she had for him may have felt like it was real, but they have only interacted a few times and for the most part, she did not like what she saw yet she still loved him a man who is fixated and addicted to “looking good,” pretension, and the flash, but who knows so much. A man woke still pretending to be asleep.

He’ll be searching for women with flash, women who want men who has flash, and perhaps that is the lesson that he will learn later when Angelie has already left, the way she has left Green Eyes, only to hear him one day confess his regrets.  

Perhaps that was true love. Who is to say?

It’s been over 18 months since she has last fallen for B, and now a man whom she interacts with via Skype has captured her interest. She noticed after a few weeks of discussion that images of his taking her body, ravaging it, was planted. She wonders if this is another ruse from the wicked one, who tempts her when there is a potential to fall in love with her soulmate again. Or perhaps her attraction to Mr. Charles Hunan is just her biological clock knocking at her door, reminding her that time is ticking.

She fantasized about traveling, building a business, and raising a child with this marketing manager who also loves traveling, the Scottish man with the Scottish accent who looks similar to Charles Hunan. But she knows that this isn’t the one. She knows that Branson is still the one. That evening, she had a dream of him and of her pregnant belly.

She feels the impatience. She wants to let Mr. Hunan know that she wants him, but a deeper part of her says, “Hold back. Wait. Branson is coming. Be Patient!”

Another part says, “You’re delusional. He’s not coming back. Move on.”