"Kenapa Ia Dinamakan Cinta?"

ASSALAMU`ALAIKUM WARAHMATULLAH

In before, I'm not a very good adviser. Some of my advice maybe true, but some are just downright guesses. I have advised so many people till now, and am still opened to give my piece of thought about some problem, but I can assure you, nothing has come close to this predicament I am facing. I would rather call it an unresolved conflict. Anyhow, pejuang Bahasa Melayu, I'm still with you guys. I just prefer English this time, as - I don't know - I can share my thought better via it. No offense.

Imagine this

You're walking down a subway to catch a train. Then, you bump into this beautiful girl. Amazingly beautiful. Per se, her appearance doesn't make too much of a pageant, but something about her intrigues you. You want to investigate what that is. Let alone being a science student, that chunk of unsteady feeling disturbs your days and nights, interferes with your sleep and alas; you make a decision to get to know her. Not love, just to get to know.

Just before you start your little naughty sleuthing, something races over you. "Hey, I'll never meet her again!", because it was like the most random bump-into. A normal phenomenon, something that shouldn't be talked in a conversation and be written in a blog. That idea strikes you like a baseball bat hitting its moving target. You fall to your seat. "But why is this feeling hasn't gone?". A minute of pondering, before you realize, you haven't just fallen to your seat, you've fallen to a trap.

A well-known, nefarious trap. Trap that has gotten many other comrades of your fraternity.

Businessmen fell into it, bankrupted.

Philosophers fell into it, befouled.

Religious men did that too, bewitched. 

Then, who are you to be able to get over that feeling - I mean, that trap? Slowly, as time flies, and leaves falling and daylight alternates with moon beam, you become passive. Insensitive towards your surrounding, your outer aspects, constantly spending time within you upon multiple possibilities to earn a second chance to bump into her. Just one, last time. Name and telephone number would be enough. You're getting weaker and weaker, until you couldn't any longer be able to sit straight in your lecture, but bending forward, trying to sketch her face.

Green eyes, jet black hair, yellowish skin. With subway (where you met her) as the background.

"Yassin, what are you doing? Are not you concentrating!?" (pauses) "Wait, is that a girl?"

Your lecturer picks up that sketch, and makes a axial movement, showing it to the class. They laugh at you. They say you're in love, and that your crush is uglier than a janitor who is always having her recess under the staircase. But you kind of just ignoring them. You now those words aren't true, and that they're but jealous. Except the fact that you've fallen in love to a fallen angel. Henceforth, you've become immune to what people think.

You move on with your life.

Sooner than you thought, it has been two months, and you still are under the spell of an unknown girl's beauty. Against entropy, or anything that suffices the laws which govern this universe, your love has gotten bigger. Stronger. More enduring. Drawings of her are scattered in your drawer, pasted in your wardrobe and locker. You manage to overpower the suffocating await (though ironically, you should have done so with your feeling). And it happens.

You pick the paper which the mailman has stuck in the slot of your mailbox. The headline, "LOCAL OLD FOLK DIED IN A TRAGIC ACCIDENT". Under it, "ROZITA CHE WAN'S WEDDING: EVENT OF THE YEAR". Meh. Who the fudge care. While closing the door behind you, another smaller headline. It reads, "GIRL CRUSHED BY TRAIN". And there's a thumbnail picture, showing the victim's face underneath it. Then, you're stumped. Thunderstruck.

Moreover, you died. Half of you isn't breathing.

That girl there is your crush. And she is crushed by a train. I'm not intending to make fun of her, but that's what the headline says. You've become so saddened, you sob. Your mother who is cooking in the kitchen hears you. "Why, son?" She takes the news, and reads the first headline. "Oh, it's just an old man's fate to succumb to death! Nothing to be sad about". Yes mom, let alone if that random people is someone you don't know.

"Ibu, kalau cinta itu bahagia, kenapa kesedihan ini dinamakan cinta?"

Then you run upstairs, leaving your mother bewildered with the idea of you falling in love with an old man who has died in a tragic accident. Hey, I'm just repeating the head line. You cry (strangely) for her whom you barely have information about. It takes you a wholesome five months to recover. You become normal again. Having a good-day-son life with your friends and family.

Just then, you bump into this beautiful girl. Amazingly beautiful. Per se, her appearance doesn't make too much of a pageant, but something about her intrigues you. You want to investigate what that is. Let alone being a science student, that chunk of unsteady feeling disturbs your days and nights, interferes with your sleep and alas; you make a decision to get to know her.

Not love, just to get to know.