Oftentimes I recall one situation from my very distant past.
I was making a birthday gift for a girl I liked so much, that I’ve been super creative with her. Actually, I’m super creative on my own, but after that relationship, the creativity faded. Gone. Especially with girls. (I have some left, but for my projects, not people.)
I tried to summon the creativity for others, for other girls too, but it looks like something was broken. Naivety, perhaps. Or maybe — I’m still naive — the motivation is just gone. I don’t know. I’m different.
That was my last creative gift to her. And I’m tempted to say the last creative gift so far. But that’s not true. I had other creative gifts, and even my wife was lucky to get some. What I mean is, they feel different these days, these gifts. Usually, I’m out of ideas. For the reason of me being much smarter and much more experienced (wiser?). I can do a very talented packaging, or something not standard by many people, but for me it’s just not difficult, and feels like routine. I’m not too eager to do things that way any longer.
That present was special, and I got out of my way to make it. It was a book packaged into a huge printed photo with some text (which I wrote). I won’t recall the size, but it was the biggest available, A0, or even bigger. I won’t recall, but there was just one printing service in town, where I could print this beast. The print of this size was expensive for my budget. I was a student, and didn’t have money. However, since that was my project (my idea I wanted to be made real), money were out of the question. If I could pay for it, then it’ll be done.
The packaging was folded to accommodate the book, so the final gift wasn’t huge. It wasn’t obvious that the package is something meaningful, so the girl tore it apart while opening. And it was super symbolic, considering the story of our relationship, me trying too hard and her basically mostly ignoring me in favour of some other (not very impressive) guy. I was too weirdo for girls, and it would take some effort and intellect to actually see I’m not a weirdo at all.
There’s some life irony in this, I keep seeing it everywhere.
I don’t blame her. Neither for ignoring me as a potential boyfriend, nor for tearing the package apart. It wasn’t obvious and expected that the wrapping is a meaningful part of the present. I myself was like that wrapping, trying to place too much meaning into the things people consider meaningless and not worthy any attention. And so easily discarded.
By the time of me giving her this present, it felt like a parting gift. I am this type of person who keeps trying while he believes the efforts are worth it, but I’m not doing even a bare minimum when I don’t feel like I believe in it. I believed in us, but at that point it felt like there were never us (actually there was, but that’s what wise, and much older us might say). And it felt like there would never be any us too. That part is very uncertain to me, because much later in life, there were us, but we were different and the whole everything was different. That other time, I was the one who failed it for us, not willing to and not meaning some things or words, too.
I don’t remember why was I doing that birthday gift to her, really. I don’t remember what I felt, beyond the usual trill of creating. I didn’t mean any negative stupid things, by the way. I met another girl, and it felt like a big thing. (And it was.) But long before that (and long of the twenties was half a year or so), I realised we’re going nowhere here, and so It’s time to move on.
So the other girl of mine was mostly irrelevant to this story, she just contributed to my feeling that’s the last thing I do there, a kind of goodbye gift or so. I never told this story to that new girlfriend of mine, even despite us being very close. I knew she’d just read it differently, and assume some intent that never was there.
It was rather that I had some idea, very unique idea of giving something from me to her. I think we were in touch, and she was somewhat depressed (as she often was, but so was I, and probably that was one of the things that made us click with each other). I wanted to cheer her up, and I did two things with that present, the package. There was the photo of her, her eyes in macro, made by her friend I had never met previously. I guess she had never heard of me. I asked that friend for the original I could print on a huge banner, by messaging her via the Internet. That was before iPhones, and modern day in-everyone’s-pockets messengers too.
I’m typing this whole story on my iPhone, by the way. Took me over an hour to swipe the whole thing.
I did quite many extra steps to make that package a reality. I visited that friend of hers with a USB flash drive, so she’d give me a raw original. She is a photographer, the friend, and so the photo was quite good, both quality and skill. My skill was to use Photoshop (on my terribly slow Windows computer) to prepare the photo for print, and add the text.
The text was not very long, but not short either. I remember it being two columns, left and right of the photo. But maybe it was up and down, the photo was surely landscape, that I remember clearly. It was a macro of her eyes, not even face was present.
The text was something like ‘I fell in love with these eyes, and I want you to do the same too. There are many things you can see in them, and I see this, this, and that, and I want you to see this too, you know. I love you, and I want you to love you too.’
It might be slightly longer, as I could add some context-aware examples of ‘this, this, and that.’ I don’t remember, and due to many various weird reasons, including me migrating to another country (and actually some other countries in-between), and destroying quite a lot of my own data, I don’t have these stupid .ps files, and the photos I took from that friend of hers.
By the way, I don’t remember what I told the photographer friend about the reason I need those photos for. I could say the exact truth, that I’m preparing a surprise gift for her. But I cannot recall whether she asked for some details and I invented something, or she was more like ‘okay, shrug, whatever.’
This story might be very different if not for what had happened at the printing house. I was served by a girl, who printed this huge banner for me. They are a company who prints these huge advertising things, for various big brands, and they’re the most expensive company in the entire country, and I was like ‘fuck it, just do it, I want the best quality print I can get.’ It wasn’t super expensive anyway, because one piece of paper cannot be super expensive.
Well, at least the one you can legally print in a printing shop and which isn’t some secret document, I guess.
The girl printed the whole thing, and I don’t know when she managed to read my whole thing, probably the printing wasn’t instant, so I was walking the shop, entertaining myself with exploring other prints, and the girl must have been entertaining herself with reading what she was printing. What an invasion into my personal romantic life!
By the time the print was finished, she gave it to me, and I wanted to pay, but she refused to take my payment. I was puzzled and confused, not understanding whether something was wrong. She stated it’s too beautiful, and she didn’t want me to pay.
It was like ‘go, go, go away boy! Off you go! I won’t take your payment, go!’ Well, or that’s how my memory serves me this. Probably she said something about it being the most beautiful thing she saw while working in there. I don’t remember the words, but I remember the feeling.
While being quite expensive, the print, I clearly remember by not feeling the relief of me saving some money on this. But rather the reaction of this girl. It was so sincere, her telling me it’s so sweet and beautiful, that probably I’d forgot this whole story by now (15 years later) otherwise. It would be just another gift from me to someone.
I think I will never meet that printer girl again.
She either lives in that country I’m not planning visiting ever again, or migrated too, but more likely somewhere far way, considering we have a war in this region right here right now.
Not that there’s any reason in that, us meeting each other. And there’s even smaller chance she’ll ever read this story of mine. I’m just a little inspiring love story from her distant past, a mere memory that will fade away one day.
And so is she, a mere memory. I don’t even remember her face, or anything of her appearance. She wasn’t much older, that’s the only thing I remember. I was thankful for her recognising my efforts. That meant the whole world for me. There was nobody I could show this piece.
And even the giftee couldn’t properly appreciate the whole stack of events leading to this piece of paper being the way it was, at that time. Probably I should have shared this whole story with her, but it’s difficult to transfer and might feel like bragging, I don’t like that.
And I think there’s some beauty in that, the people we’ll never meet again, but the memories they create for us. That’s what I love about society.
And the book, I have no idea what the book was. I cannot recall anything about it. Neither author, nor size, nor genre. Perhaps the book was just an afterthought, perhaps not.