By Clara Jane Daclizon Badil • September 18, 2025 • 5 min read
Attention is not affection.
But it’s easy to forget when the words sound like care:
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Tell me your problems. I’ll solve them.”
“Why did it take you so long to reply? If it takes three hours, don’t reply at all.”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t want you to get scared for me.”
“What do you want? Where? Let’s go. I’ll get my keys.”
“I’m leaving. Why didn’t you say goodbye?
Look at me—I’m really leaving.”
His name is ____. He is the smiling one.
Yet for five months I looked into his brown-hazel eyes and found only sadness—a boy haunted by his own shadow. The smiling one, always wrapped in laughter and noise, the life of the party because loneliness feels too sharp to bear. But somewhere along the way, he saw me too. He noticed the quiet fear I carried in everything, and without a word, he reached out his hand.
He was a flash of recognition in the second week of December—nothing more. The second time came a month later, still nothing: no spark, no story waiting to begin. It wasn’t until another month passed that something inside me shifted. Somewhere in February, my heart finally stirred, and my story about him began— a story he doesn’t even know he’s in.
It was the eve of Chinese New Year. I was on my way home when, across the road, I noticed a man smoking while scrolling on his phone. As I drew closer, there was instant recognition. Of all the times he could be outside, why now? I tried to look the other way, a small act of hope, but even a drowning person will clutch at a straw. He looked up, caught my eyes, and called my name. I ran. I ran as fast as I could. If you ask me why, I don’t know the answer. It’s simply what I do when I see someone I know—fight or flight, and I always choose flight. It never occurred to me that he might run after me, but the moment I slowed down, he was suddenly at my back, startling me, and the onlookers must have thought we were ridiculous. And now he has the audacity to ask why I was scared. But the real question is, why did I run in the first place? I still don’t know.
That was the day I knew something inside me had shifted. That night, for the first time ever, I felt seen. It sounds crazy, but nobody really notices me. I’m invisible to most—forgettable, like a shadow that slips by. But that man ran after me just to ask how my day was. A small question, yet it cracked something open. For a moment, I felt important. I felt seen, at last!
Starting that day, his glance, his messages—everything about him—repainted the colors of my day. Suddenly, my dull life became vibrant and alive with meaning. Every interaction, whether five minutes or forty, felt enough to make the ordinary glow. I found myself willing to settle for anything he offered, no matter how small. He became the first thought that stirred when I opened my eyes and the last whisper in my mind before sleep.
He made sure I was included, calling my name whenever he didn’t see me in the crowd. Sometimes he even had to drag me out of the corner and into the circle of people. We talked about his life, my life, and everything in between. He learned that I had never tried anything—clubs, alcohol, sleepovers, parties. Then he offered his hand and said, “Let’s go.” He was also the first person ever to ask me out.
I like talking to him. I know how to push all his buttons, and I can make him angry faster than most people he knows. He’s the only one who ever really looked me in the eye and asked about my problems. Nobody knows the weight I’m carrying—but he does. He notices the things I barely admit to myself. With him, I feel seen, validated, and, above all, valued.
But I am mature enough to wish it could be him, and intelligent enough to know he is not the one—not now. We are not ready for a lifetime together. He is still running from his own shadow, and I am still building my own name.
He looked like the one I prayed for, but that doesn’t mean he is my answered prayer.
I thought what I was feeling was love—a love that lives somewhere between potential and reality, a love that offers hope so vivid it feels real, yet may never truly land in the world we live in.
The lesson I learned from him is this:
not every act of kindness is love. Sometimes a person is gentle and attentive not because they feel something deeper, but simply because kindness is the way they were raised.
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