✧
In the past 23 years, my life events had been a series of
random happenings, fleeting memories, hasty outbursts and sudden mishaps – all
of which my participation could only be described as half-hearted at the best.
But things have changed – drastically – this year, because
of this one incredible human that came into my life. And right because of him, I
feel like I have only begun to understand life
right now and I can’t never thank him enough for that.
He is Q, which to me it just seems like the most beautiful alphabet ever.
As boring as it could ever be, we were classmates in
college. “Can’t believe we actually have to start our stories in the most
uncool manner possible – ‘we were classmates!'”, it is still something we joke
about up till today. But we definitely didn't start off smoothly.
Time had put up 4-year long test for us, as we were
made to remain unclose and unlove, distracted and drained by people
who weren’t made to stay. There were brief moments where our souls met and
looked into each other – the memories of them stay unbelievably magical even
until now – but we were too scared to acknowledge them and give the feelings a
name. Because it seemed like time was telling us no, people were telling us no,
society was telling us no; so in the
end, we too told ourselves no.
‘No’ was all that we could hear, but what exactly are we
saying ‘no’ to? We didn’t know back then, all we knew was that if we ever say yes, it would be the start of a
complete whole new dimension of life and the idea of it was just way too
daunting for us to even think about.
That’s the first lesson he taught me of love – that it is the
ONLY one single thing that can ever be meaningful throughout the whole of our
lives, and even though we can recognise it by a single moment, it takes immense
amount of courage to embark on it. And sometimes, we got scared.
But life always loves to surprise.
Circumstances unfolded themselves in a way that neither of us had
planned to, and suddenly, it felt like we could say yes. But still, for long while after that knowing, both of us hesitated.
It was a long period of mutual and self-doubt, where we ignored our hearts and
succumbed to the noises in our heads. There were nights after nights where I
would lie wide awake, heart racing furiously at the memories of his words, the look in his
eyes, my hair where his scent lingered and the temperature of his touch. I have a reputation for sleeping
just about anywhere and anytime, so you could imagine the sheer intensity of thoughts
that have to be present in order to keep me up that awake throughout the night.
Sometimes, my heart was so weighed down by the thoughts of
him and pumping so angrily in my chest that I had to take a few deep breaths to
calm it down. I remembered thinking, "If muscles have a finite extent of
usage and would eventually stop working from years of accumulated wear and
tear, then I am literally killing myself faster right now by missing him so tragically hard
and sending my heart muscles to a non-stop HITT workout". Yet, there was nothing
I could do but to miss him, rejoicing over any little happiness we had and then getting stuck in the imaginary doom that we won’t ever work out.
It was a months-long torment that I had with myself, which I
am sure he had it himself too. But on hindsight, that’s when I understood yet
another lesson about love – that it is indeed bittersweet, that it really has
the capability of swinging one back and forth the spectrum unannounced,
propelling you to a state of overpowering happiness at one moment and leaving
you wading in absolute despair the next.
“How could this possibly not
be love? What else could make me feel this
much if not love?”, I asked myself this over and over again whenever the noises
inside my head started to sound. Time didn’t give us the luxury to toil in our
own hesitation, it slipped away mercilessly as I swung between retreating back to my comfort zone and taking that leap of faith. Soon, we found ourselves standing at a point where we both realised that this
would be the last chance that we would ever ever have for each other and for
ourselves, that's when we finally, finally, jumped in.
And that’s the start of our stories.
✦
p.s. Pardon me that for a long time from now, this space will be
filled with many sentimental posts like this. I am having the love of my life,
it’s so incredibly beautiful that it is really important for me to pen it down. Thank you for witnessing it with me.
p.p.s. And on another note, today is the day that I listed him as my 'Emergency Contact' and I felt that it was SUCH a remarkable milestone in our relationship. So I texted him to exclaim "our" new achievement, hoping to trigger a string of emotional declaration of love and celebratory mood. Instead, he stayed online certainly long enough to read my texts but then went offline without replying. Wellllllllllllllllllllllllll, I suppose this clearly tells you who is more excited for this relationship yea?
