A midnight phone-call startled me awake. A friend on the other end, her voice sodden with restrained tears. "He pushed me away," she sobbed, "He said he needed some space, but I don’t know. Something’s wrong… Well, everything’s gone wrong… I don’t know what I did, he just pushed me away. Everything I did was wrong… no matter what I did… nothing is right. What happened? I don’t understand…"
There’s nothing I could say, really. No consolation came in mind, no soothing words. Nothing, really. I suppose I could ramble about with something like "Just hang in there," or "Come, now, think positively, maybe he just had a lot in his mind," or "Well, just leave him, then!" I knew by some hard-learned lessons that no wisdom would be wise enough for her right now. So I just lied there on my bed listening, struggling to stay awake.
The story begun like any other classic love-story. A chance encounter. Small flirty talk. Exchanged phone numbers. Some other flirty talk. Other dreamlike encouters. And it struck, as forceful as ever: Love. An over-the-fence, out-of-the-field, fiery-passionate-unbehaving Love. So the story goes… until that fateful moment…
For some relationship it could be another uninvited person suddenly appeared out of the blue. For another it could be boredom, a ghost of ex-lover, career, geography, you name it. But the point is there would (almost) certainly come that moment when the chemistry expired, the opiate effect fades, the rose-coloured glass shattered with a crash.
It’s a phenomenon not unlike the eclipse, when the light changed into a darker shade and suddenly everything looks different. Those playful-sarcasms once considered amusing became annoying, or those coffee talks once enlightening became certain sources for violent arguments. The fiery attitude once taken as a strength of character became a frightening threat of assault. Frequent phone-calls or e-mails or SMS’ once happily anticipated became a terror. I wish I could make my poor friend see this, in the eclipse of the heart, everything goes wrong, even for the right people.
So who’s to blame? The person we’re with? Love? The national inflation? Global terrorism? Well, I’m afraid there’s no correct answer for that. Maybe love has faded, or changed into something else, or maybe it was never been there at all. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Of course not every relationship destroyed by this. Human being evolve—hopefully into a better creature, both in shape and in character. Love, as human feeling and emotion, evolves with the person. Sometimes it evolved into friendship, sometimes into mutual contentment. In some cases love evolved into hatred or fear. I dare myself to believe that the love we carry within our heart shall evolve into whatever shape we choose for it. We could shape it into a deeper understanding for the person we’re with. We could shape it into caution and fear. We could shape it into sharp critics or judgment. Love could turn into whatever we want it to become. Because the most important element in a love story is the individual. Not the situation, not the past or the future, not our peer. No one and nothing but ourselves.
Unfortunately for a self-proclaimed naïve-romantic like myself and some others, not very many people realize that the love they have for their companion evolve into whatever they choose. Too many people blame their changing feelings to other 
elements outside themselves. Some blames it on their companions, others choose to hide behind an unfortunate situation or unsupporting peer. Once I met a person who choose to believe that a past relationship is much more important than the present one (ever heard someone said "If you can’t get along with my ex, you are free to go,"?). I personally think this particular person hides the inability to nurture the relationship behind an over-glorified past-romance. This person has failed to see that the past is just a memory, agreeably important as one’s history but absolutely trivial compared to one’s present life.
If—in a distant chance—I could say all this to my dear heart-broken friend, perhaps she’d say “But it takes two to tango. I tried my best, but what about him?” And she has a point. In a lot of relationships, we could not expect our companion to have the same ideas, or to give the same amount of effort in the relationship as we do. What can I say, it’s their choice to be—to hide behind any self-justified reasons not to give their best effort. But there’s a lesson to learn in any story, both the joyful and the sorrowful. Then perhaps the lesson was meant to be learned by us and not the other. After all, some things has never written in the sky. All we could do just learn the lesson, be content that we took the chance and effort so that when we looked back someday, hopefully we have no regret for whatever turned out to be because we knew we’ve given our best. Just weep if it’s necessary, and listen to that 80’s heart-broken ballad :
" … once upon a time I was falling in love,
now I’m only falling apart.
Nothing I could do for total eclipse of the heart…
Once upon a time there was light in my life,
now there’s only love in the dark.
Nothing I could say for total eclipse of the heart… "
[Bonie Tyller, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”]
Just remember, don’t mourn too long. Life awaits.
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