"Wake up. You're gonna be late. I love you," he said,  as I suddenly opened my eyes to find myself alone in my bed, my dream/fantasy slipping away from me. "I love you too," I mouthed back to the air.

My love is humbled down now. It does not demand to be loved back. It is not proud, and will not be used as a phrase spoken over and over again in a louder tone and gritted teeth to bully my love into saying "iloveyou" back to me when he is mad at me. It is now gentle, unassuming, spoken mildly into the air, to be never caught or returned by anyone again. It is meant to be lost in the world, unobtrusive to anyone, wasted as it may go. It is simply be.

There is a certain kind of meekness associated with having feelings of love for someone you're not committed to. The lack of security makes you sick with love and longing and enables you to give the loved one a type of reverence that creates delusions and encourages masochism tendencies. You envision yourself making all sorts of sacrifices for them, being enslaved by them, kissing them even when they're mean and insufferable to you, coming up behind them to give them out-of-the-blue hugs when they're busy playing games and don't wanna be bothered, saving your favorite food for them, and so forth -if only they will love you back. It's as if somehow you know how futile it is to be loved back, and the more that you know this, the more you keep thinking of gestures of grand, noble and sometimes exaggerated proportions -which in your delusional mind you can do- just so you will have that wonderful feeling of being loved back again. It's so hard to cope up with unrequited love, you think.

And then you wake up next day,  and you're fine,  and you conquer the world again without batting an eyelash.