I cannot deny the fact that I’ve been in love quite a few
times. And it has never been the casual sort of love, on the contrary it’s been
the intense kinds where I have mostly wanted to spend the rest of our lives
together.
I first fell in love when I was probably 17 years old. We
were best friends in school and the irony is that we began dating only after we
moved to different cities, meeting just once a year. Despite all that, it
lasted 6 years and came very close to ending the way we wanted it to. That
never happened and I was left with a lot of bitterness for a long time to come.
I swore to myself, (the way we do when our hearts get broken for the first
time), that I would never fall in love, never date, but mostly I learnt that I
will never compromise what I wanted to be for anyone- and that was my first
lesson in love.
The promise didn’t last long and before I knew it, I was
dating again. Again in different cities, hardly meeting each other. Countries
changed and breakups happened. This time however it was different, for once it
was mutual so there were no tears as such, just a hollow feeling that you get
when you revert to being single after years. Obviously I’d matured and things
were easier- or so I thought.
The next one was sort of weird and am still not sure if I
was seeing him. Stupid as it may sound, I actually didn’t know. I had been
terribly attracted to this person for years but always thought that I was
totally out of his league. Again different cities (which had become so my
thing- I could compartmentalize my life, have my career, my own set of friends
and not be answerable to anyone, rather bound by anything), but it was much
more intense than anything I’d ever experienced. At one point I thought that I
could never have a normal relationship after him, I’d become so used to not
talking for months, or zero expectations that I had begun believing that’s
probably how it worked. I had too much of pride and ego to even question what
was happening. When this one ended, I thought my life would end and it didn’t.
The wall I thought I’d built around myself came crashing down and I just went
numb.
Not for long I must say! I began dating yet again and the
similarity was so acute to the previous one that I thought that if I went
through the trauma again, I might just collapse. So when S asked me out, I
simply said yes. We were very good friends, he treated me like china, always
took care of me and tolerated all my tantrums. I assumed that if he was soo
good to me as a friend, he would definitely treat me well as his partner. I was
starving for a normal relationship, where you could call the person anytime you
wanted to, where you didn’t have to hide behind the wall and he gave me that
and much more. The doubts I had about ever being in love again- without pride
or ego and selflessly have long been shattered because that’s the kind of love
I received and I simply had to reciprocate it.
The reason am writing the much hidden story of my life is
because:
- - I have wanted to come out in the open for a very long time.
- - I couldn’t care less of what people think of me
now
- But mostly because whenever I've dated someone, I've never confessed of it in public. It's been like hiding it, and not telling
about it to anyone. So when I read someone on insta of how she had fallen in
love and couldn't care less what people thought of her, how she showed her
excitement about meeting that person, it made me so happy.
I realized that love
is not a thing to hide. When you give so
much of yourself to a person, there is nothing to be ashamed of it. You
were young, you made mistakes and you learnt or maybe didn’t but these will be
with you for the rest of your life and mostly you’ll look back at them only with
fondness- I do..
