Yet There it is

My best friend and I had a conversation recently that got me thinking and gave me a restless night with tosses and turns because what she said echoes with you more than you can think.

She said, “I want to be someone I’d like to meet”. I was stunned because it got me questioning what I was becoming, because I certainly am not the best version of who I can be. I want to and if I’m completely honest with myself I know why.

I can’t get myself to believe. Every morning I wake up and I believe a little less and a little less and a little less. It’s that feeling of hopelessness that tears you up and makes you wonder what the point of anything is really. Every day I believe a little less in possibilities, dreams, love, fantasies and people because everything feels so temporary and when you take enough hits, there’s only so much energy to believe as much as yesterday. I’ve spent a lifetime being a magnet to a pile of crap – and as harsh as this may sound, if I’m ever going to be believe again, I need to spend some time to take out everything and everyone that has put me down. I want to leave behind every time I felt lost, every time I was screwed over for something I deserved, every time I failed to speak up, every time I let someone undermine my authority, every time I let someone else manipulate me into being in a place I despised, every “yes” that was a no instead, and every time I felt time I felt like I didn’t belong.
When you’re born an old soul, you see beauty in the small things like a cup of coffee and an evening having waffles with your favourite person. You don’t love places, but the memories you have with people in those places. And in a world as cruel as we live in, it feels like an everlasting winter till someone promises you spring. And when it is your time, it’ll scare the living hell out of you because you count the seconds on your watch to see just how long it’ll last. And that is who I’ve become, a writer who sometimes can’t believe in words when I need them the most, unfeeling and cold.

When I knew I’d had enough, I wanted someone to remind me of all the good I was. I wanted someone to say, “You’re everything I know you are, tonight you’ll let go of every inhibition and walk out that door and change the world. You’ll break all the walls you’ve built and leave the door open so someone can see you”. I’m worried someone won’t like what they’ll see, because that’s a girl broken one too many times and hiding in corners that no one frequents as much.
But what she said made me realize, I didn’t deserve to hide, not with everything I had to offer the world.

I was enough, in every way. I was strong and I kept going even when then the road got too dark. I moved forward and I wouldn’t complain as much (still working on this though). I built people up because I knew how much you need that when no one else cares to light up your world. I’m a great friend and I make for amazing conversations amidst those disheartened by small talk. I love people who understand my taste in music. I love more than you think but I suck at showing it and it’s constantly on my mind find its way out. I love bookstores and having someone sit with me on the floor read out passages while people would stare and wonder what lunatics we could be. I like telling people they look good to their face instead of texts and social media because emojis can’t cover the blush on someone’s face when they realize someone noticed them just for a while.

I find it hard to apologize sometimes but I’m getting better at it. I don’t smile a lot but when I do I light up an entire room like a sun on the ground. I make great tea and it’s the only think I’ve ever made in a kitchen. I’m extremely funny if you can understand my sense of humour. I like being upfront because Adulting needs to be done without dropping hints every morning. I’m kind to strangers and but at the same time I’m savage because that’s how I break barriers. And while to a huge lot, these may seem like the small stuff, they aren’t as simple. It takes a lot to embrace who you are so completely that you’ll never let anyone else tell you that you weren’t good enough or make you feel like a mistake defined you. Every bone in your body will fight, and somewhere you are becoming the person you were raised to be.

Far from what I once was but not yet what I'm going to be, the person you’re supposed to meet. She’s getting there, I promise, as fast she can.

Her

So have you ever fallen in love?" she asked him.

His mind traveled back to the time when he went to school just to have a glimpse of her. When we waited hours alone in a line for tickets to a show that he hated but she loved. When he gulped down that spicy dish she'd made as her first attempt even though everyone else had left it. To everything he had wanted to do but couldn't. To every shattered dream, every broken hope.

"Love? Nah, it just isn't something for me, I think", he replied

You are the most beautiful thing that's ever happened to me

She lay there, just looking exquisite. And I stood a few steps away wondering what good in the world I had done, of which I had no clue to deserve her. No. I did not deserve her. I knew that. She could have had someone who was better than me in everything. Someone more intelligent, more handsome and in every way better than me, of that I am not just sure but positive.

But the one thing, the one thing which I think tipped the scales in my favour was that I am sure no one could have loved her the way I loved her. And no I do not exaggerate here though people believe I do. I loved her just the way she was- free as the wind. She wasn’t in any chains of the world and yet she was more a part of it than any other being I have ever seen.

And love her I did. And do. And always will. Because ask me what colour I love the most and I would tell you that it is the colour of her eyes when she first looked at me and I realised that she loved me too. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. But that was the time when I felt that I would be overwhelmed by this feeling in my heart. The time when I felt that maybe I had a second chance at love. When I realised that heartbreak does not need to last forever.

Ask me what my favourite song is and I would tell you that it was that one song without any music in the background which she had sung herself. The one when I was down in the mud and she sent to me just to lift me up. We were hundreds of miles apart and yet in that moment it felt that she was right beside me whispering that everything is going to be all right. And sometimes that is all someone needs.

Ask me what is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I would tell you that it was when she was so sleepy that she fell asleep while talking to me on a video call. And just lay there like the most beautiful creature in the world and all I could do was look and not touch because fairies are not meant to be touched.

Ask me what my greatest fear is and I would tell you it is the fear of losing her. To think that one day we might never be together again, that she might leave me or we might get lost in this world with things which would be beyond the illusions of control that we mere mortals have established for ourselves. The things that we believe we can control when we cannot even tell what is going to happen in the next moment let alone years into the future.

She’s like one of those ideal things they talk about in epics. The ones which you think are not possible but you admire because they set a bar for you to achieve because they are the ideals you admire. One you think that you’ll never be able to achieve but you want to try all the same. Except that she was real and she was sleeping right in front of me.

I climbed in right next to her and took in her sight. Sleeping just like she had been all those years before. Everything had changed in the world but it seemed she was the only one unaffected by the cruel wounds time inflicts on us. The only divine being in this world of men and women.

I looked at her once more, slowly kissed her cheek and then lay down to sleep. Who cares where the future will take us. All that matters is that for now, at least, she is with me, I am with her.

The fact that we are together. That is all that matters.