A love lost

It seems ages ago as I recalled the lonely days of ’97 when I spotted him for the first time. It is the same old face, same old person but why do I still yearn for him now? Why?

The year was 1997 and I was in my seventh grade then. It was our first assembly when I noticed him. Was it a love at first sight? Why he had to look so different from all other guys, I wondered. Oh! The look in his brown eyes, so cool and composed, so sure of himself. In his presence, the other guys were reduced to nothing. It was as if he’s the lone man on earth. Again the way he walked, the way he avoided people on his way. Why did he have to appear so different from others? Or was it in the eyes of mine only?

Fortunately for me, we happened to be in the same class. With the passage of time I befriended him and we became good friends but friendship was not what I was looking for. I was way beyond friendship but he never once realized my feelings. For him I was just another girl and treated me cordially. But I mistook his friendship for something more and misguided myself. He failed to notice the way I looked at him quite different from the way I looked at other guys. I, in my own little ways, tried to show him my feelings but in vain.

One day while we were doing our assignment I found him with the new girl (let’s call her Ms abc), who has joined the class day before. She was a pretty, attractive girl but I did not find so because I was so blinded by jealousy to notice it. Seeing the two of them together was an unpleasant sight for me. I hated to see them together everyday but it wasn’t in my power to separate them.

Now he completely avoided me. For all he cared, I no longer existed. He had the eyes only for Ms abc. The rest of the world mattered not to him. Damn it! Why did he have to be so blind, not to have noticed my feelings, I used to think. But all was futile. He’s lost and I was devastated. Attending classes have become a sheer compulsion for me because I lost the will to live.

Well one day, I was sitting in the corner of the class when he approached me.

“Ugen, I’ve something to tell you,” he said. My heart was thumping against my ribs. I was full of anxieties. I eagerly waited for the words I longed to hear forever.

“I love..uhh..” he paused..

“You love whom?” I asked but I was certain he was going to say me because why would he have come to me otherwise to say so. But to my utter disappointment, his next words were, “I love Ms abc” he meant the new girl. I was dumb struck. I opened my mouth to say something but words were struck in my throat and refused to come out so I closed my mouth. Somehow my silence disturbed him because his next words confirmed it.

“Come on, don’t you think she’s the right girl for me? You are my best friend, I thought at least you can be happy for me” he said. I didn’t say anything still because I couldn’t trust me voice. My eyes were blinded with unshed tears I had to hold my tears by pretending to gaze at the empty sky. He just stood up and went and left me with a broken heart to heal.

We did not talk to each other since but I didn’t mind. I know I lost a friend but damn friendship to hell. I didn’t care for friendship from him, I yearned for more and he wasn’t willing to give more. Later that way, alone in the vicinity of my room, I questioned myself, “am I the right person to answer his questions? Why did he have to rub salt to my wound?” He was torturing my already tortured heart.

After the incident, we were merely strangers. He had come to know my feelings afterwards but he never bothered. A plain, simple girl could be of no use to him and like a ‘rat deserting a sinking ship’; he left me for a ‘greener pasture’.

Five months later, the stunning gorgeous Ms abc was pregnant. She might have been everything but smart. The couple was rumored to be constantly into fights. Each blaming the other for their careless action and Ms abc was believed to have been constantly in tears.

One day he came to me again. This time to seek my advice I backed away again this time too. How could a ‘plain Jane’ be of any help to ‘Mr Perfect’? But that wasn’t entirely the reason. I was tongue-tied because I didn’t know what to say. What could I have possibly said? Then, the duo was expelled from the school and that was the last I have seen or heard of them.

Now as I peeped through the window, I can picture him in my mind’s eye, the way his brown eyes held my stare on that fateful day. Alas! The last and final look when he came for my help. I wish I could turn back the clock and go back in the past but it was a decade ago and everything seems so blur and vague.