I walked the halls of emptiness and despair, where the faint fluorescent lights of the halls flicker slowly as my heart does. I hear the noises and the laughs of countless students clashing in the hall, lost in my thoughts until someone proceeded to call out my name.

“Hey, you! Class is about to start, hurry up!”

I entered the class, doodling along the margins of my notebook, pretending to take notes, while my eyes kept drifting towards… you. I think you're cool, but I keep it to myself. After all, it feels like we live on two different planets. I try to distract myself by interacting with other students. I smile and laugh at their jokes—just to remove you from my head, but each time I do, it leaves me emptier than before. No one notices that I look at you a little longer than I should, that every small interaction with you feels like a blessing and a curse. Love, I’ve learned, can either leave you hurt or lift you to new heights.

After school, I sit along the school bleachers as I scroll in my feed, slowly losing myself in thousands of clips of people who had found their own person. And me? I only watched them, as I lose myself to the craving of love.

As I scrolled I encountered a video. It was my favorite show, about people who were competing just to save their lives. I thought it was bland before, another show about killing, how original, but still watched it anyway, and now here I am watching videos I never thought I would. One caption captures my eyes, “My God, my universe,” and without realizing it, my chest tightens—almost like it was supposed to do that automatically. I can feel a quiet scream trying to escape behind my ribs. I do post lines too, lines with a heaving longing, but I delete them before anyone can see. Even in the digital world, my feelings feel unworthy of attention, like echoes that fade before anyone can hear them. The clips are small, but are a reminder that people can express love freely—yet I choose to leave mine to rot away in the closet.

I watched the couples in the hall, their hands slowly brushing against each other, their smiles shared, their happiness radiant like the mighty sun, their “I love you’s” loud in every corner… I think to myself, “I love you, but I will never tell you that… It’s forbidden, it's not okay, it's never okay… I am a guy, and he is also a guy.” I fought with myself constantly just to keep myself in check. Yet I already forgot to think about me, myself, amidst the storm that is slowly getting stronger.

February is the month of love, yet it reminds me of the love I will never be able to hold, the warmth I cannot reach. My love exists unseen—maybe it's better this way, to leave it upon the playlist in my phone, in the bookmarks I had saved, and in the messages that will never be sent. It is my way of loving someone—you never ask, yet I devoted myself. I move through the world carrying the weight no one sees, a love too taboo to be exposed.

I walked home, along the faint orange glow of the street lamps, contemplating the things I would say if I were man enough. This reminded me so much of the times where my problems were almost non-existent, the childhood memories of me begging my parents to let me play for another 30 minutes, how after dark my parents would prepare a warm meal for me and shower me with love, I missed the days where I used to just love myself wholeheartedly like how my parents loved me, I wish that I still love myself like how I love him… I wished for the month of February not be reduced to just being a holiday for couples. After all, love can be interpreted in so many ways.

I arrive at home and lie on my bed, staring at the ceiling walls, scrolling through online video clips again, and it feels like the universe is taunting me. People confessing their love, heartbreak, and showing pain, I can relate to, and I ache with the knowledge that my own confessions are trapped inside me. I try to craft words and letters that I know will never reach the surface, because my courage will always be weak to blurt out the words that have been haunting me for years, and social media only mirrors back the solitude I can’t escape. Every pixel reminds me that I exist, I care, but still I am invisible.

While everyone is sleeping quietly, inside me is a loud roaring echo that keeps on bothering me, a kind that keeps you awake till dawn. Scribbled along the pages of the diary were the words “Live with love, embrace the pain, the fragility, and the moments so unbearably shameful.” I wrote this a long time ago, when I used to crave love like any other person. I lie awake thinking about the weight of unreciprocated emotion, about the ache that doesn’t fade, about how love so pure can exist in pure solitude. The quiet becomes so unbearable, and yet I keep feeling this overwhelming feeling in my chest, keep on hoping, and keep loving you in secret.

I envy those whose love can be free and visible; I wish I were brave like them. I wish I never looked back and run away. I wish I faced my fears and did the impossible. I envy those whose hearts are cherished and loved, whose happiness is contagious. I have the words, I have the heart, I have the posts, and yet still it is not enough. I watched my life scroll away like it was part of the social media algorithm. I watched my chance slowly fading, the ache in my chest getting stronger.

Sometimes I imagine a world where you could notice me, where you can feel the weight of my love. But those moments are only dreams, and dreams have a cruel way of vanishing when the sun rises. I am left once more with silence, with unlinked hearts, with words that vanish before they can reach the person I care about the most. Social media has become my very own confession wall, my gallery filled with posts I never got to publish, I exist, I love, but still unseen.

And yet, I continue with my life. I scroll, I write, I craft captions and playlists and unseen gestures. My heart beats quietly in the margins of someone else’s life. Love exists in this world; you just have to look for it in places you never expect it to be. Maybe, just maybe, I just needed to look at the mirror and see what really matters… Yourself. The songs I had saved for someone else who will never know might go unnoticed, but that's never a reason to stop. Maybe no one will ever see it, maybe no one will ever notice, but it exists. That is enough to keep me breathing, even if it hurts.

I finally close my laptop and let it die in the dark, feeling the emptiness wrap around me like a blanket. Love takes on many forms: friendship, family, romantic partners, and desires. Mine is quiet, a painful devotion that led me to finally love myself for who I am, a love that thrives in the margins and in silence. Maybe being “not nerdy enough to understand” isn’t a tragedy after all. Maybe the real tragedy is that I loved someone so fiercely that I lost myself in the process, quietly and painfully, and no one can see it. And yet, somehow, I keep on hoping, even if my love is invisible. Though I want to thank you for being a victim of my shallow emotions, at last, I can let go of you now. Now I could finally cast out the words that lived inside my diary…“Live with love, embrace the pain, the fragility, and the moments so unbearably shameful.” But hey, maybe you’re not nerdy enough to understand all of this…

The Frontman