1 Senior

Log #205: Senior

I had always been very shy and I would always be the last person people would pick. Once, when I was a boy, I tried to play tag with my friends but, even though they lacked one player, they still voted to leave me out just because I couldn't run fast. They wanted to win, so they didn't want a loser on their team.

I've never been in a relationship before, simply because I didn't have the guts to be in one. I was, so to say, an unmanly coward. The day I got to college I decided to change that part of me, and started talking to people. I began to socialize and mingle with people from different cliques that I didn't became a part of.

I was walking one day when I heard one of my friends talk about me.

"That guy was such an ass," said a male. "Do you notice it when he shakes nervously? He looks so stupid I don't even know what to say."

"Yeah," replied a female, giggling with her other friends. "He can't even talk to me straight. Does he find me so attractive? But, yuck, I would never ever go out with a guy like that."

I heard all of that as I passed the classroom wherein they gossiped. I could only clench the strap of my bag and bite my lip as I strode away, pretending I didn't hear anything. I was never attractive, though I also thought I wasn't unattractive at the same time; I was just average in looks. I wasn't also great at academics since I had the habit of easily succumbing to pressure.

I grew up as an orphan in an orphanage that exploited children to make them work dirty deeds. After our hellish orphanage got busted by the police, me and the other children were sent to legitimate orphanages to be taken care of. A year later, a wonderful couple, both of whom were atheistic biologists, adopted me. I had lived in their house since I was twelve, and now that I'm nineteen I'm already living on my own in an apartment near my university.

Because of my upbringing I grew up without believing in a God. I had always thought that such a thing was impossible. I mean, if there was a God then what would he be? Where would he be? Things like that floated in my mind, until—

I met this wonderful woman. A senior. Her smile pierced my heart like a dagger and I fell in love. The problem—

She was Catholic.

I met her during lunch as I sat under the shades of a tree—my usual spot. No one ever bothered to come near me, perhaps it was because I looked so gloomy and unapproachable, but she did. I never did understand the logic of her actions.

A) The strong would always be with the strong – this was the law of nature. After all, natural selection ensured that the best genes would get passed on to the next generation.

B) I wasn't someone who could be said to be part of the "strong" gene pool.

C) Hence, I should have been ignored by those of the strong.

Yet, strangely enough, she approached me as I was eating my sandwich. Her black hair swayed beautifully in the wind, and her brown eyes sparkled resplendently. She beamed a smile at me as she gently pulled her hair back.

"Were you the one," she said to me, sitting down at my side, "who wrote that article about atheism on the School Daily?"

"Y-yes," I stammered as I awkwardly ate my sandwich. 'Bad first impression man,' I thought. 'Stupid!'

"I dit it, why what's wrong?"

She giggled adorably. "I just disagree with your comments that's all."

"And why?" Despite her being beautiful, I was strongly an avid atheist. It was my religion, my belief, my stronghold. All shyness left me, as I readied myself to confront her. When I was set on something, I was like an unstoppable bull that not even a matador could stop.

"Because God is not a thing that's why," she said to me, cackling cutely. "You said you doubted his existence because you couldn't understand where he would be in the universe right?"

"Right."

She stood up facing me. "God is outside the universe," she said, clasping her hands behind her. "He is neither a thing, nor an object that exists within creation. Think about the word 'love', is it something that you can touch, feel, see, taste, hear or observe through any known instruments?"

"No."

"And yet it exists."

"Because love is a concept."

"And why did the concept come about in the first place?"

"Because—"

Why indeed? I would've answered that it was because of humans but if so, to what end? Humans were intelligent creatures simply because they could create something for a purpose: a spear, a knife, and other tools—all of which served a purpose. Then what about love?

I thought that it could have been for the purpose of reproduction but then I remembered the concept of "love" was deeper than that. Love, as people, even the most uneducated, would instinctively define, as something going beyond sexual desires—it was something more, something mysterious.

Why did it come about indeed? Was it a failed invention? What's the use of inventing a concept that served no purpose? Sexual desires would have been enough to preserve the species; then filial affections would have been enough to keep a social unit together yet why did love, the concept of which was so broad, existed?

Love was more than for the preservation of the species. You could love your friend, love your teacher as if she were a family and even—yes, love your enemy (something I heard from a stupid Christian once). I felt defeated just because I couldn't find the real purpose of such a failed concept.

Perhaps it was because she saw how I was struggling that she beamed a gentle smile at me.

"You're looking for God in the wrong places," she said, trying to lecture me. "Let me tell you a secret, God is in my heart, and so would he be in yours if you just learned to love him."

"Stupid." I curtly replied. I stood up and began to leave. I really did thought it was stupid. I mean in one's heart? I couldn't even laugh as my mind got paralyzed right on the spot with the utter stupidity of the claim.

However—

Two warm hands wrapped around my right hand as she held me to stop.

"Wait," she said. "Can we meet again? I want to talk about this with you more."

The logic still didn't add up. Her logic was something different and—as much as I hate to admit it—something supernatural.