The movie When Harry Met Sally told an 11-year-long love story, I can top that with an on-going 17-year relationship and it goes as follows.
Fate reunited two friends after 10 years.
After 10 years apart, on a BTS platform, a girl, now a teenager, greeted a boy cautiously and asked "Is that you, Pap?" It was Wednesday night after a tuition class on Siam Square.
Every Wednesday thereafter, I made sure that I was wearing a clean new uniform specifically to wait for her after class, so we could walk home together. But after that semester, I did not contact her for some long-forgotten reason and we were once again separated.
I once heard a saying "You always remember your first," which I think is true but as time flies by those memories fade away until something reminds you about them again, like a newly discovered keepsake. In my case, the memory trigger came seven years later in the form of two movies.
The first movie was Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies. It began with a man wishing to be reunited with his love and 10 years later, he gets the chance. The second was Finding Mr Destiny where the lead actress tried to find her long-lost crush through a "first-love" agency, a unique business specialising in finding people's first loves.
Suddenly, the memories came flooding back and I wanted to see my first love again. Each time I stood on the BTS platform, I found myself wishing she would be there greeting me the same way she did back then. "How is she? Where is she?" I couldn't help but wanting to know.
Yes, "you always remember your first," like your job, pay cheque, pet, school, boss, mobile phone, home and so on. But why do we remember them? May be because when something new occurs, you make an effort to understand it, but when it occurs again and again and again, you start to get used to it, making it less important and more like a routine.
But what about love or things involving emotions? How can you tell the difference between hunger or butterflies in the stomach? Is it love at first sight that makes your heart beat faster or is it the caffeine in your coffee? Even scientists have taken an interest in which happens when we "fall head over heels in love". The chemical that make us feel giddy from love at first sight is "Dopamine".
You don't need research to know that. If you remember something so clearly, it means it was an important moment for you. That is why I've never forgotten how I met her.
Back in the cinema, when the credits were rolling, an idea came to me. Let's find her. Unfortunately, my information was way out of date. I only had information of her graduation year, her unused email address and old phone number. In the real world, there is no "first-love" agency, not that I know of anyway, so after three months trying to find her, it became clear that this is hopeless for me. What was left in my mind was that she went to study in Japan.
Without any plan to continue searching for her, apparently I just got a ticket to Tokyo. Again, without any useful information to go on it's like looking for a needle in a haystack but may be with good luck and help of fate, the reunion scene can happen again in a train station in Tokyo. Who knows, if you believe in fate, yeah, it might just happen.
But there's one more thing: everything you have read so far may seem like a blind faith in fate, but thinking about the past too much can make you trapped in nostalgia.
So no matter how great the story was or how good it makes you feel, life goes on. Yes, I love my story but it is also a history.
Yes, that quote is true but for love, aren't we looking for the last love?
Sithikorn Wongwudthianun is a multimedia producer for the Bangkok Post.