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My first time giving flowers to a girl.

People see me holding a bundle of flowers, and they immediately think of me as a romantic guywho’s planning to surprise his loved one. A picturesque scene for them, perhaps. And I find myself giving in to their expectations and playing that role.

Playing that role? Am I not trying to surprise someone with those flowers? Am I not anticipating a happy, loving smile in return? Yes I am, but there is still a subtle divide between who I really am and who I appear to be. I cannot help but feel that the image of a romantic lover, the one we so often see in movies and with which people associate me, is just a facade I’m adopting, in part because the occasion demands, and in part because people expect me to.

But I am not that romantic lover. May be it’s the lack of the desperateness in me which precisely makes those images romantic. I don’t know. I’m just not the person people imagine me to be. I’m something else.

I’m trying to maintain that divide between who I am and who I appear to be, even while adopting the image of a romantic lover, because I know all too well that the moment you try to identify yourself with an image, the moment you try to deceive yourself and be an image that you’re actually not, the image immediately loses all vivacity and spontaneity. Only awkward, unnatural pretense remains.

But then I realize there might be an overlap between who you are and who you appear to be, albeit not in the way we expect them to overlap. The longer she fails to answer my calls and the more my surprise plan looks like it’s going to be unsuccessful, the more I become agitated and restless. Perhaps somewhere in that agitation lies hints of a romantic lover wanting to surprise his loved one with roses and violets?

I guess things are often just different from what we expect them to be.