Dear Phantom

I should have asked for your name.

I thought about this as I made my way across the open court, crushing some dried leaves as I sluggishly walked on. My shoulders drooped and it felt as if my sling bag had suddenly weighed a million tons more. You were not there.

Part of me would like to give myself a good spanking for, would you believe, not doing anything about it when I had a chance and the other is still rolling its eyes in disappointment while asking, "Are you kidding me?"

When I decided not to get married, I realized that the root does not lie in my incapacity to love but in my inabilty to stay committed. Whenever I find myself in a long-term relationship, there would always come a point in which I would feel as if my life is about to be contained within the four walls of a box and thus the urge to wriggle out of my would-be cage would persist.

I've read once that in this world, females are born to be farmers. They plow the field, plant seeds and nurture them. They are the soil from which life is sowed and reaped. Males, on the other hand, are hunters. They must leave and brave the perils of the wild in order to provide. Such is their task.

That is the problem. In this life, I am the hunter. And what I have realized from experience is that when you assume the role of a hunter, the other person, as if by nature, automatically becomes a farmer. This shift, much to my disillusionment, becomes inevitable.

This leads me to think that, perhaps, what I need is another hunter. This sounds ideal. But then the skeptic in me would say that, knowing the person that I am, the setup might just lead to a clash of egos. I am better off alone, really.

I have been arguing with myself a lot lately. But as they say, it is not always about finding the answers, but learning to enjoy the questions.

So with this, I guess you would remain to be a question. Your name, your age, your job, everything. And I would enjoy spending the following Saturdays trying to imagine how you'd look without your square framed glasses or how that boyish grin of yours would always disarm me and how you have absolutely no idea about it. Expect me as well to replay the only conversation I had with you which lasted for about 40 seconds. Or that amusing moment when you were about to go out of the room then all of a sudden you turned around,  reminded me of a paper that needs to be submitted the following week and strode off. I stood there, dumbfounded. I went down the stairs with this retarded smile on my face, I tell you.

And then yesterday, I scanned the room hoping to find you. You were not there. I sank back at my chair, disappointed. I felt like a stupid adolescent in her mid-twenties. I listened to the two-hour lecture with your absence at the back of my head. You were gone, just like that. Just like when you strode off after reminding me of that paper.

Was I in love then? No, I don't think so. If I were, you would be virtually stalked by now. I just love the idea of you being a phantom. It somehow fulfills this desire to be deprived of something I think I would like to have. My thirst for challenge. The thrill of the chase. Whatever you would like to call it.

I am thinking now that perhaps I was right not to have asked for your name. Unmasking you would have diminished this desire altogether. Remember that there are some things that are meant to be admired only from afar.

I see us  aboard a train one of these days. And I am certain, you would be the man staring at me from the other side.