Part I
She is beautiful. An
image of perfection. These were my thoughts when I first saw Gene and today, she
is even more enchanting. I loved her from first sight even though she did not
pay much attention to me. I felt my heart pounding out of my chest the moment
she asked for my schedule. I’d never felt this way before, the warmth running
through my body, knots in my stomach, tingly things running a little marathon
from head to toes. I was star struck but I decided to ignore it. It was a
sunny day on campus and the warm breeze carried a gleeful atmosphere. I felt
like nature was telling me that today Nia, today is your day. The past six
months had been horrendous with the passing of my father. He died in a car
accident- truck driver was drunk, driving fast and before he could see that the
robot was red, there was a smash, panic, screams, sirens and shrieks of terror.
I don’t really talk about it. It happened three weeks before our birthday- Yes-we
shared the same date.
It wasn’t easy for me because he was my favorite
person in the world. On that day, he had promised to take me shopping for a new
gadget on the weekend, but we never went. When Mother sat the three of us down
in the living room, the same night, holding back her tears -I lost all control. I
screamed, I cried, felt suicidal and because I was an anti-social pessimist, I
shut everyone out: friends, family, my two siblings and even though we’ve never
been the best friends anyway, my mother. I was in my little dark hole again. I felt
like the world had ended and that in this life, the wrong people always die
because the driver survived and was probably out there drinking, driving and
killing more people’s dads. It took me a while to get my senses back. But anyway - enough with my depression.
My girl. We’d only
met several times through consultation but the way we were in sync made it feel
like we’d been together for years. I knew that there could never be anything
between us but remained hopeful- she did that to me, turned me in to the
optimistic type. The similarities between us outweighed the differences, but
there were too many risks. She was my teacher, older, wiser, attracted to men
and had me deep in the friend-zone. She was 36-year-old independent Italian
woman, single and had reached a point in her life where she was ready to settle
and I was just a final year student still trying to find her way through a BA
English degree. We both had a burning love for literature; we loved poetry and
most of all – food. We would talk for hours and it was deep- the friendship of
course, we genuinely cared for each other and we’d both lost people who we
loved dearly and would have given up the world for. She never spoke much about
it but I could see in her eyes that she was still hurting and in pain due to
the loss of her twins, almost ten years ago- leukemia.
I wanted to bear
that pain for her, allow her to cry on my shoulders and let go of all the trauma,
but we couldn’t talk about it, it never went deeper than that, neither did I want
to pursue the topic and saw best to give her time and just be there until she
was ready to open up. I still don’t know how she never saw the signs of my
deep affection for her, not that I did the all the little things because of that, but to just see through the way i looked at her, stolen glances, accelerating heartbeats in embrace... I’d accepted my role in her life and repressed the feelings. At times I'd feel it rising like an erupting volcano, but would quickly hush it down with reality: She just didn't love me the same way.
[To be continued...]
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