#thefirstdaywemet

I was waist deep in the shit of life when I met him. I didn’t feel the same way he did when we met. Or probably was afraid to put a label on it. But out of the all the intermediate people, I connected to him the most. He has one of those eyes which you can look at while telling him about your life and rest assured he is listening to listen, not to tell. (Does that even make sense?)

I remember when we first met. He had a navy blue shirt on, left untucked. He looked beautiful, in a casual your-shirt-is-untucked kind of way. I wanted to tell him that he looked good in the shirt but I didn’t. Sometimes I can be a little upfront. I wish I remembered what shoes he wore though.

And then there was me.

I had to wake up early and was completely disinterested to dress up. I was sneaking out so people wouldn’t know I was still in the city. I had to lie about my absence to escape some unwanted unproductive responsibility. I was dating one of the most toxic persons having walked on the surface of Earth. His existence has been poisoning lives for a couple years now, with his whimsical and irrational depression dragging down soaring spirits and making them believe that things are wrong, that he is the most depressed and desolate soul walking and comparing himself to Dr. Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes as if their fictional being justified his non-fictional one. When I told him I’d be going out with my ‘new’ friends, we had an icy conversation but no direct confrontation. I am glad now.

It was supposed to be our eighth month anniversary and to be honest, I wasn’t thrilled about it. To me it was not just our eight months of togetherness, but also my eight months of low self esteem, over an year of writer’s block & eight months of sacrificing all the things I held dear to me (my self respect, my self worth) for him. For me it was just 23rd of a month, nothing else.

Anyway, I wore this full sleeved t-shirt with a really vague quote saying, “CLASS OF 98″. I wasn’t even born in ‘98. Although now I wish I was. I had zero makeup on, probably a little bit of kohl. Early mornings disgust me more than makeup.

He called me to coordinate our journey to the rendezvous point and that was the first time I heard his voice. It surprised me because it was unlike any male voice I’ve ever heard. It wasn’t heavy, the kind of heavy that scares you and wets your panties at the same time. It wasn’t full of authority and order. It was like air. I don’t know how to explain the… I dunno…beauty of it? I am using that word way too often. And when we got down from our train at the rendezvous point, he was the first one I saw. Now that can be considered a romantic symbolism or a very unflattering thing because he was the tallest out of the boys and I, out of the girls. And when we went to the movie, I wanted to sit beside him. Of course I couldn’t and did not let that phase me. But during lunch at Pizza hut when he sat across me and I was thankful the tables weren’t as big. And then at KFC, he sat right beside me and they gave an excuse of “trying to break the sexism” among us girls (We were three guys and three girls).

Sometimes when I am just sitting idle and wondering, reminiscing what I did in my past years or more specifically the past year, I recall all the way I let love take me on.

The day my grandfather passed away and I let myself get tortured by my curiosity and saw him slide straight into the incinerator, the man I had seen in flesh and bones to be reduced to bones in his final hours, to immediately catch fire before the doors could shut on us forever. I will never see him again, I thought. We were fighting that day and I still called him. I called him so he could calm me down, tell me it’s okay. I opened up to him to realise it would’ve been better if I only shut myself further down. He was ice-cold, his voice seared into my ears. And when I couldn’t take it anymore, I told him I’d talk to him later to which he said something like, “Yeah, when do we talk nowadays?” I realised he wasn’t interested in talking about me that day. All he was interested in was talking about himself and his misery. I will always remember what my best friend I recently lost told me after I called her after hanging up on him. “Trust me, if he let’s you go that will be the worst mistake of his life. No one will tolerate his tantrums the way you do.” I am thankful he let me go. Or else I would’ve never known what love feels like.

You know, they tell you that when you are out with a person you love all you are supposed to feel are butterflies in your stomach? It’s a goddamn lie. Because when I am out with the person I love, I feel free. To laugh loudly, to hum, to walk like a favourite cartoon character. I feel like, look, there is my best friend. But then Bollywood scares me, making me question if that is love or not. But when my friends talk about him and tease me about him when he is not there, the pink blush of my cheeks put all doubts to rest.

And him. God, him.

He feels different. When I look at him, I see things. I see colours, like green and brown (not trying to be racist, no). And his smell. He smells…normal. He smells like sunshine. He, I don’t know, smells like me. And his taste (no pun intended). When he kisses me, he tastes like me, the kind I’ve always dreamt my kisses would taste like. Even the deep breath that slightly kisses my lips after we break away sends shivers down my spine, all how I’ve always dreamt of it.

And all these things compiled together does the most important thing the universe can do to me. It calms me down. The green in him makes me feel unconfined and the brown in him reminds me of the strong big mountains, Earth, that I can crash into him without looking if he is there and he will always catch me. And the fact that I scribbled this little note on my little notepad right above a part with my amateur colour pencil strokes with the hope of stroking out a masterpiece and spiteful words like ‘worthless’, ‘ugly’, ‘freak’ written over it to silver line my failure says a lot .A hell of a lot.