The sense of serenity

It’s funny how sometimes a little of taste or scent can bring you back to a certain period of time in your life, evoke warm and fuzzy feelings within and make you feel as if one can’t turn back time then this will be the next best thing. To me, it would be my mother’s cooking that makes it taste and feel like home, the scent on someone’s else body or it could even be your friends. I mean BO aside, everyone do have their own distinctive scent – a concoction of beauty or fabric product that they used at home.

By next January, it would be exactly 6 years since I’ve first met C. I have talked about him a couple of times before. During one of the little time that we spend with each another, he left an impression or rather scent on me that have lasted since then. He is a big fan of buying various perfumes (technically, it’s not a perfume because it’s not Eau De Parfum but Eau De Toilette but we Malaysian don’t care, do we?) and stuff and really into those manly types (which suits his personality anyway) like Boss or Ralph Lauren. No DKNY or shit for this fellow.

So on this particular day, he was using Romance by Ralph Lauren and I was hooked on it not so much so because I sampled it from his bottle but rather the scent was transferred on me (no need to ask how la) and my pillowcase and bed sheet. Well of course like all good things, it ended and we have lost contact since then. I couldn’t really figure out why I am still using Romance though. I mean when I started it was because it reminds me of him but over the years I don’t think about him at all other than now and then when my bottle finishes and I needed to get more. Before I knew it, I am actually down to my third bottle now (of which I am keeping all the empty bottle like mad cow, why ah?) which I have just bought. Not cheap but it usually lasts me for a year and we are talking about daily usage.

Would have been the fourth if it wasn’t the fact that I am getting immune to the scent hence I had to change to something else temporarily. (Polo Black was the next best choice – abit sweet and sickly and the scent reminded me of when I started my agency job, all the anxiety and getting myself to familiarize with new people and new processes) So anyway back to him – he wasn’t my greatest love of all and while I can choose whichever version of memory I could have of him, I have decided to go for the good memory instead of being the bastard who ran away. Have to admit, looking back it was the right and best decisions for both of us anyway as it wouldn’t have worked out. So why am I still sticking to Romance?

Perhaps the shoulda woulda coulda factor or maybe the fact that we have lost contact for good hence the wondering what could have been and what happened to him mystery factor. I think it’s more of the sort like a summer love kinda memory that you will remember for life. I was young and he was truly the first person that I fell for and it was a time of mixed emotions, anxiety, innocence lost, euphoria, infatuation, sexual tension, uncertainty that turns into heartache and then healing and learning to move on that all blends in one big bag of memories that the scent will evoke everything I stop and think about it. Maybe it’s just memories and the feeling of a happy time, of simple love and the the night after bliss when you lie in your bed with his scent all over you long after he is gone.

Maybe one day I will switch perfume. I will get myself a man and will contain all our memories together in every sense: touch, taste, sight, scent and every heartbeat in and out of a perfume bottle. Till then, I will always have Romance.