On Unrequited Love

Falling in Love has never been easier...

Jill, against her better judgement, had been smitten. She who had prided herself in anticipating everything was taken aback by how effortlessly Gabe swept her off her feet. She who had at one point been on the "all men are dogs so I'll die single" bandwagon quickly jumped ship at the sound of his voice. She who had been closed up let him tour confines of her life that she never even knew existed. He made her weak, but for once, she didn't mind.

It was extremely easy for her to accept his oh so many flaws; besides, she felt that he accepted hers too. Despite their short tempers, they were always determined to try again. They swore that they would never give up on each other, that they had come too far down the winding path of their love to turn back. Yet weak she was, not from fighting to keep her Gabe, but from fighting to keep herself afloat in the frigid waters.

She takes me back to one of the happiest days of her life, the day she and Gabe first met in person. A mutual friend of theirs had introduced them through a WhatsApp group a few months prior (bless technology). She tells me that their first online interactions were nothing short of feisty. She'd spent her life fighting, and in that case, she was fighting against the voice in her head that was begging her to give this self-proclaimed fuckboy a chance. Much to his knowledge and glee, Gabe was stoking that voice's fire, telling her all the right things at all the right times. She finally let her guard down. Owing to the miles between them, they began phone dating.

Our guy had got what he wanted. However, something set Jill apart from the girls he'd played before (and was playing during that time). She loved so innocently, so purely, "like a virgin". His conscience surfaced from the abyss he'd buried it in; he couldn't bear treating her so. With a heavy heart, he broke up with her for the first time, citing some phony reason that put her at the centre of the blame. The hopeless romantic in her hated herself for letting their relationship end. Little did she know that she hadn't been at fault after all.

At this point of her narrative, I'm slightly confused.

"Wait, so you mean he was playing you, but he found a way to make you feel guilty for it?"

"Well," Jill tries to string up an explanation for her folly, "I didn't know the truth then. He revealed it to me years later, which infuriated me straight to hell, man! Especially considering that I had spent so much time blaming myself for it, and that I'm the one who coerced him to give us another shot. At the time he left me we were in the midst of tackling one of our many issues, and I was its instigator, so I guess it was a perfect opportunity for him to dump me."

I sigh. Her phone rang, as if on a subtle mission to prevent her tears from breaking their banks. She excused herself.

Jill and I spent pretty much that whole Tuesday talking about Gabe, from how she liked the shape and alignment of his teeth (I hang around weird people, I know) to how often she used to envision a future with him.

Theirs was quite the bumpy ride. I'm impressed that they lasted as long as they did, even if it wasn't as long as she'd hoped. He was an atheist; she was a Christian. He thought she needed to watch her tongue. She was insecure about all the girls who wanted a piece of her Gabe, especially since he seemed to enjoy their attention. He was studying a bulky course that strained their communication. She had some serious self-esteem issues; he never seemed to be reassuring enough. They disagreed on a bunch of stuff. Her mother created a huge bottleneck by forbidding her from being in romantic relationships and literally keeping her on an electronic tether. Jill once tried to graze just an inch farther from the stipulated area to sneak a chat with her love. She paid dearly for it.

In spite of all this, they always found a way around their troubles. It never occurred to her that it only takes a spark to start a catastrophic forest fire.

Towards the end of our day, I was happy to spot a smile on her face. She quoted one of these cliche' inspirational memes we quickly bypass on people's statuses. It goes something like "Sometimes holding on hurts more than letting go." She left me in the dark about what that disastrous spark in their love story was, but after pouring her soul out to me like that, I was feeling pretty saturated anyway.

"Sometimes I miss him terribly. I guess part of me hopes that this will be like all those other times when we broke up and made up soon after, but it feels pretty permanent. I'm starting to find peace and heal from the scars I got being with him. It'll be difficult because I had set my being to always loving him, but I deserve the chance to reprogram. It's about time for the fighter to be fought for," she tells me, sipping her Mountain Dew while staring at the sunset.

~Better-Meghan Trainor feat. Yo Gotti~

Post Tags love lust pain