Another Love Story

Everyone has a story: a special love story wrapped in secrets, to be doled out in snippets of parceled joy. They polish the memories in stolen moments of leisure; they gift second-hand happiness freely to friends and family.

She’s been waiting to find her story for a long time now. She’s had her eyes peeled and her heart dangling from her fingers, ready to pounce. Fiction had taught her its honeyed clichés through lessons of prose, poetry and Disney endings. She was prepared to catch, categorize and lock up her prospective happiness before it could possibly escape.

As an awkward, boyish teenager, she had no idea of who she was or who she wanted to be. But it did not matter; she was sure that the right guy would know for her.

Fate clearly had other plans. Scorched by rejection, insecurity and worse, she sailed through school still clutching at her fairy-tale dreams. Those years were a comically sad anthology of unfinished beginnings, wasted promise and abrupt endings. By the end, she had achieved little self-discovery, and more than a little self-doubt. She stopped looking for love, but still expected it to turn up someday.

And then came her first real heart-break. It shattered all her delusions; it made her bitter and cynical. She began to hate herself, filling up her arms with slashes of pain, trying to quench the bleeding of her heart. She had never considered herself to be pretty, but now she despised the sight of her face, as it leered at her from car windows and murky puddles. He laughed at her flaws jokingly, but they became real in the merciless gaze of the bathroom mirror.

She stared at her face every night, watching it melt in the stark yellow bathroom light. Her nose looked too wide; her shrunken eyes were too small. She could not change her appearance like her behavior to please him. She knew that she was cursed with this ugliness for life, and his cool contemptuous pity. It seemed to her like physical imperfection were a sin as unforgivable as and even more unchangeable than stupidity.

One day she mustered the strength to leave him. She forgot him, the broken memories they had pieced together, and all her childhood dreams.

Although she thought that she didn’t want anyone else, she did learn to love again. Slowly, she learned to love herself. She began to find herself, for the first time. She realized that her imperfections are uniquely her own; they are a part of who she is. Even her sadness has shaped her mind. She no longer even belittles her loneliness, as it has shaped her bent of thoughts more surely than any happiness ever could. Since then she has learned to forgive her mistakes, and live with her regrets.

And suddenly, when she least expected it, now she finds herself living out her long-awaited love story. It surprised her with its absolute perfection and near-impossibility. It seems to her that the whole universe had been conspiring to help her find you.

You, with your wonderful unbroken smile, are the person she’s been waiting for all her life. She’s been missing you all this time without even knowing it, every time she cried alone and shunned, every time she wished someone cared. She’s been waiting to love you all this time; yearning for you every time she diffused unrequited feelings into her faltering poetry and pathetic scraggly drawings.

You’ve confirmed her cherished belief in happy endings. She had never even suspected that she was capable of such unadulterated happiness.

But this is not a happy ending, this is a beginning. This is the beginning of a future bright with hope. She can face anything and everything, now that you’re walking with her, matching her steps, hand-in-hand.

No matter how this story ends, it’s the most beautiful love story for her; another love story budding along quietly to the harmony of the world.

[ The image used is the one wallpaper on ‘love’ which did not look overtly sappy. This is a slightly autobiographical piece, which is the result of my attempt to write something happy for once.  Usually I only write when I’m depressed or frustrated. Hence, I personally feel that this is inferior to my usual posts…but at least I tried.

Have a great week! Cheers! ]