I stopped counting the days go by when I was 16. It was February and I was in love.
I thought she liked me, and I tried putting together a verse which I hoped would make her understand the depth of what I felt. I know it seems strange now, but somehow at that time, she was all I could think of. She flooded my being and I was helpless. There was image of her in my mind, like a portrait, which shadowed me everywhere I went and I felt like time had stood still. I remember the exact day that I told her, and for every day after that I would always make a note of how much time had apparently passed by, whether the portrait in my had changed (it hadn't) and whether she had had enough time to change her mind. The image was fresh as ever, time moved pitifully slowly and she stuck to her word. It was not to be.
A lot has happened between then and now, the image of her that I carried for so long slowly faded away. I say faded, and you're probably thinking of a picture receding from a screen, something observable perhaps, but I think it was more like a rock by worn out by waves, with the patient passage of time. You look at it now and then, and a few eons later - poof, gone! In the nine years since that February day (it was the 11th), I don't think that I have moved an inch from I was then. I know I just said that "a lot has changed...", but the point is that I haven't. The image that I carried then has been gradually replaced (a sort of reverse of the erosion process), but the same sentimentality persists. I am where I was all those years ago, but none the wiser in the mysterious ways in which things seem to happen one after the other. I have learnt how to get my way around this world, how to wear a mask, make pretenses, smile while I am burning within - in short - to be a well adjusted person, but I have never understood this burning desire within me to "be with someone".
Somehow, the want for good conversation and the warmth of human companionship has been so important to me, that I have been willing to let go of other things in order to fulfill this need. I have even thought at times that it'd be better to live in material poverty with someone with me, rather than being alone and well endowed. As it turns out, fate (I now believe there is such a thing), has arranged things so that I spend my time midst people whom I do not understand ,and who I am certain do not understand me, in a painful solitude that I am beginning to get used to.
If you (the future "I", or a friend) are reading this and wondering if I am to be empathized with or laughed at, do neither. I have only said things the way they are and I will continue meandering along this path which I reluctantly accepted. I cannot use the word "hope", it is something that I have learnt to stay away from, but somehow I feel that all of this is leading me somewhere - I don't want to imagine what it will be like but whatever will be, will be. Time will tell.
