Aumirah

It’s funny how so much can happen within so little time. It’s as funny as it is terrifying.

Three years ago, I didn’t even know your name.Your name belonged to other faces, just letters ready to be blown by wind.

Few months later, we met. You’re still a stranger, your face unfamiliar among hundreds of others, and you never crossed my mind.

Two years ago, you struck a conversation with me. We’ve talked before, but never like we did that night.

I guess that’s the night where, as they all said it, everything changed for(almost)ever. And it happened before I even realize what was happening.

It scared me to death how you mean so much to me in so little time.

Its been three years since I know you. And now we’re an hour away entering the fourth.

I guess I always started it the same way. With hope, and wishes I deep down know wont come true. And they’re always, always about you,

But I can tell the difference this time. And its best to retreat before I suffered lost even more.

Thirty minutes away…

Conversations chatter around me, but I just shut my eyes in the corner. I want to stock away every piece of you in a box, store them in the deepest part of me, and lock it up tight; never to be out, to be discovered and acknowledged by anyone. Setting the clock as if the three years hadn’t passed, as if your name is still irrelevant, as if your face is still unknown, as if you never crossed my mind.

Fifteen minutes now…

It won’t be easy. Close to impossible. You’re my everything even when I didn’t know it. Every time you came back, I was never ready to let you go. But you gave me no choice. It’s either letting you go, or never get back on my feet and move on. And I have. As best as I could, as best as anyone could in losing someone who meant so much to them. I open my eyes and realize how close it is to the end.

Ten seconds…

People are shouting in glee now. Counting away the last moments of this year. It had been another year for us, some months contained our last moments together, some months contained us not contacting each other, just small talks from you, and ended by you. These last few months hadn’t been kind to me. But I stare all of the other months where I get to see your face, you get to make me laugh, and moments when we’re young with every innocence of youths before we’re swept away to adulthood. Where I’m swept away to a reality to realize we’re just not meant to be. And I was left to drown in my own sadness, because it clearly doesn’t matter to you as it does for me. I just hope that…

One second.

Love at first sights are ridiculous, and most likely aren’t real. Everybody knows this. There’s infatuation, lust, these things make sense and are natural. But you can’t really love someone based on your first sight; love is far too complex and deep to be felt by simple eye contact that lasted less than ten seconds, if that.

Something she dislike about herself is that she’s always been shy. Ever since she’s a little girl, she prefers to daydream while gaze up into the sky - or down the ground when she’s forced to talk to others and look into their eyes. Oh dear. The ground is ten thousand percent more appealing than eye contact and awkward conversation. She’d rather be alone, for sure.

She grew up from that, a painfully slow process. She learned how to keep her chin up, while maintaining to be her awkward self in her growing years. She learned how to talk softly, cheerily, with politeness, when to bite. She tried to gather as much courage as she can to look at people’s eyes now - isn’t that how you connect with people? But it broke her, bit by bit, learning that they never bother to hold her gaze or look at her twice pass the introduction. There’s always someone else more interesting than her, someone who doesn’t look away every ten seconds because she’s still learning not to stutter.

So she also learned how and when to tear her gaze, to shift her attention just fast enough before anyone could ignore her first. She became somewhat of a master of that. Her family called her careless and has short attention span, she called it being careful. She won’t catch herself breaking anymore.

What does this have to do with love at first sight?

Unavoidable social gatherings are one of the things adults know, and young adults started to learn. She would’ve deny it if her mother didn’t teach her manners. Again, she still thinks love at first sight are ridiculous and impossible, because she would’ve fall in love with him the first time she saw him.

But she didn’t.

Instead, they shook hands with a smile on each of their faces, letting their names slip from their mouths. He looked her in the eyes, and she counted slowly until five that he finally turned away. A record holder. She still wasn’t the type of person who strikes the first conversation, and neither was he. But they laugh together with their friends, and somehow she found courage from there. She would seek his eyes. When she talked, his gaze followed her. When he talked, he never skipped her face. She knew, because every time their gaze met, her heart made a little jump. Every time he smiled her way, she pushed herself to smile back. Used to being ignored, finding comfort in hiding, she felt like being pulled into the surface and exposed to sunlight for once.