[From the Diaries]
I don’t want to write about what I’m going through now. So let’s write about something else. Something from a hundred years ago.
When I was 17, I fell in love. Madly. Deeply. Irrevocably.
It was love at first sight for me. I enjoy revisiting these details as I write, because it brings me closer to who I was then. This 17-year-old girl who was so messed up, yet had her whole life ahead of her.
There was this boy. We were separated by oceans.
One morning, around 4 AM, I was sleepless and scrolling Facebook when I came across his profile. And instantly, I fell in love with his smile. I am not even exaggerating when I say instantly. It was that quick.
I added him.
It was 2010. October 10. Yes, I am still weird enough to remember dates like that. He used to call me weird. In a good way. I think he added the “in a good way” part just to soften it. I don’t think he ever really liked me that much.
When I added him, he accepted. Then he messaged me.
And we started talking. Every night. Until almost morning.
We moved to messages because Facebook chat wasn’t what it is today. Then from Messenger to Skype. And the day I heard his voice, my heart skipped multiple beats. I was completely smitten. He sang me my favourite song.
Our affair was brief. Just over a month.
But he told me he loved me first. I said it back eventually.
Then, after a few days, he started changing.
Mind you, we had never met. This was all online.
He started distancing himself. I heard from him less and less. And then it was over.
And I shattered.
Nothing was the same anymore. I was alive, but the world felt grey. I didn’t go out for months. I bought book after book and stayed home reading. I changed my entire wardrobe. And for the first time in my life, I bought makeup.
I felt ugly. Like he left because I was ugly.
Of course I was 17. Of course I would think that.
That was also when I started journaling. I wrote about him. Constantly. I marked dates. Every interaction. Every message.
I still have that notebook.
For the next eight years of my life, no one saw me without makeup. I became addicted to it. I hated my bare face. That insecurity ran deep.
And I never really stopped loving him.
He left my life, but never my heart. I carried him with me constantly. There was rarely a moment I didn’t think about him. So much of it was unfinished. Unexplored. There was so much left to fantasize about. Like running into him for the first time.
A year later, we were both in Malé. We were not in contact.
Then we ran into each other.
And the love that had been living in a void suddenly became real. He was just as perfect as I had imagined.
I was doomed.
I was obsessed. Infatuated. I would call him over and over. He would barely pick up. He walked in and out of my life briefly. We never became anything real.
He told me he loved someone else. And I knew I wasn’t enough for him. But even then, whenever he buzzed, I was there.
We never did anything beyond kissing.
Not because I didn’t want to. But because I loved him so much that I knew if we crossed that line, I would crash. Because deep down, I knew he was never going to love me the way I loved him.
Eventually, we drifted.
He got a girlfriend. Then he got married. And we have never spoken since.
And eventually, my love for him was replaced by other people. Or maybe just layered over. I don’t know.
Now, fast forward to today.
It has been a few years now that I have noticed him viewing my stories. He does not follow me. But sometimes I see his name in my views.
And I wonder. Why?
The man whose attention I would have traded the world for once… now thinks of me every now and then.
God knows what purpose it serves for him.
But still.
How fascinating.
She Was Sea 