Ningas Kugon

you’re ablaze

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Maybe knowing me more does lead to loving me less.

I read before that everything in this life is mid—or ordinary—even a person. It is our emotions that make anything or anyone extraordinary.

How fortunate you must be to find yourself in the phase of getting to know me—where you don’t know what my favourite colour is yet, what my favourite food is, or the whole rationale of my being.

Exciting, isn’t it?

All the mystery.

All that I could possibly be.

All the possibilities and imaginations.

It probably feels like getting something new, maybe perfume, clothes, or shoes — so exciting to uncover.

Like a new place you think you’d love and would probably visit often.

And how great it is for you to see a creation built from her ancestors’ lives, how their lives were used as instruments, and how those very lives were sacrificed just so that this main character could exist and live the way she is living.

You don’t even have to do anything anymore but to admire, to be curious, to want to know more.

But what if the more you know about her, the less you’ll love her?

And just like anyone else in this life, you, too, will find yourself losing interest.

You’re currently ablaze—on fire, so intense, so fierce, burning.

But what if that fire runs out?

What if, in the middle of it all, you realize that nothing is special? What if the very emotion that made you feel curious tells you that she’s ordinary?

What if the fire you once had runs out, like a cogon grass?

Or maybe it doesn’t burn out on its own. What if you discover that everything about her is water that douses the flame within you?

I used to believe that when people got to know me more, they ended up loving me less.

But lately, I’ve been realizing that I feel like I’m being loved less than I deserve because no one has yet made the effort to know me more.

And that’s what hurts the most, realizing that no one has ever been interested enough to stay after the fire — long enough for losing me to become something worth fearing.

Not being known is one thing, but not being valued? That is another.

I have never been reassured that my existence has weight in other people’s lives—or even in one person’s—that if I were gone, there would be an empty space in them that only I could fill.

Maybe you’ll burn like cogon grass. Maybe everything about me is water that douses whatever fire people might have within their whole being. Or maybe no one has ever been interested enough to keep knowing me after the fire.

But regardless, I feel like I am being loved less.