She kept sitting there on the stool hearing nothing in the midnight silence

except the loud thuds of her heart. Her heartbeat went from normal to extremely slow

while she tried to take a few gasps of breath as softly as possible so he wouldn’t hear her.

“I really do”, he said a little more urgently.

In that one moment all her fears of perhaps being with the wrong person, of perhaps

thinking loving someone is wrong, of perhaps thinking she couldn’t possibly love someone as

dangerous to her as him faded into the dark night. Her entire body leapt in response to his words.

She wanted to say yes.

She wanted to say yes more than she wanted to breathe and she couldn’t believe she could

feel like this.

“Are you sure”, she asked softly waiting for reassurance.

“Yes” he says…”when it rains I think of you and it rains here every day.

It makes me yearn for you.”

She smiled and said, “I feel the same way.”

That night she slept feeling the passion of first love. She felt a rush, an excitement,

a thrill, a need to be with him so strong that it created a physical ache in her gut.

She slept with a smile on her lips and romance in her heart.

————————————————————————

At 7 am he woke her up as usual. Her phone rang and before she even picked it up she

Knew it would be him. As it had been for almost a year now.

“Rise and shine gorgeous!” She smiled and it was the best start to the day.

At 3 pm that afternoon he called her again.

“I was missing you,” she said.

“hey me too…I wanted to tell you something. What I said yesterday…forget about it. I mean

I’m really sorry but I don’t think I actually do.”

“You don’t think you love me?”

“I…I think so…I feel like that right now…I..dunno…maybe I do. But I keep thinking of her too.

I miss her.”

————————————————————————————

It had happened again. It was the thousandth time that he professed he felt something and

then retracted almost immediately. It was the thousandth time when he spoke about her. ‘But why?

But why did he have to woo me? I hadn’t loved him. In all our years of friendship

I had only seen all seasons with him as a friend. As he began to feel he had lost her, he had

turned the force of his potent charm to me.’

There was flirting, flowers, walks in the rain, moments where they had almost kissed

…he awoke the woman in her…he awoke her to her potential to feel

love and passion and she tried hard to fight it. But she had always known that as anything more than a friend

he would be dangerous to her. She was just a straight forward tom-boy who loved to read

and had never experienced much male attention. But he…he was the classic Casanova, not very

obviously good looking but attractive, dangerous, exuding sexual confidence.

In that one moment when he hesitated, her heart raced over the various possibilities…could she be in love

with him? Could she have a relationship just to find out? Would it break her heart if he

left? And then she knew she could never be second. Second to anyone.

This time as a tear fell down her eyelashes and cascaded her cheek, she said

in a steady voice, “I think you should be with her. You’re uncertain and your feelings for

her are pulling you to me. I think you should figure out which way you want the wind to blow.”

She said the words hoping against hope that he won’t choose to leave. She said the words with

extreme pride. Pride that hides the biggest wound ever…the wound of a heartbreak.

——————————————————————————

He chose to stay away for a month and they decided it would be best to not speak in that while.

Not once did she pick up the phone to call him. Not once did she make the mistake of texting

him. But every hour she looked at the phone hoping he would, as he had always done on

the hour. Every hour she looked at the phone with a lump in her throat telling herself it was

for the best…it would never have worked out…she could never be in love with someone who was

still hung up on his ex. But it hurt. Every hour yet another knife would slice up a piece of her heart

while she waited impatiently. He was as proud as her. He did not call that entire month.

Time flew fast. It also moved at a snails pace and was sometimes so excruciatingly slow that she would

wonder  whether she had given into the pain and moved into a still oblivion. But time did pass and with

determination she wrenched her heart free from him. She did it for herself because she could never

be second. The monthwas  finally over.

————————————————————————————

“Hey…how you doing?” He asked the moment she picked up the phone.

“Hi…I’m fine. How’re things with you? How’s the job and life in general?”

“Great…I met a senior manager at the office and they want to give me…” the trivialities continued

for a while until they reached an awkward silence.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry to put you through this. Thanks for being so mature… you were right.

I do love her. And I was confusing my feelings for her with my feelings for you. You’re the bestest friend

ever and I’m sorry for screwing that up.”

Somehow it didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt that much because in the span of the month she had forced

herself to stop loving him. She had forced herself to know that he thought of someone else and that even

if he came back she wouldn’t take him. But she also knew that they could be best friends again after

a while because he was proud as she was. So neither would be a fool to succumb to their feelings.

———————————————————————————–

Ten years later they are still friends and every time they meet there is an odd sense of nostalgia…

about what could have been. But they also know each other well. They look at their current chosen

partners with amusement knowing that they could have been better but also feeling content and lucky to have walked

away years ago knowing they could have been worse.

Am I over-reacting? Is this slow down because I am becoming accustomed to the pace of the world and have realised that even success comes at a slow pace? Is it because I have realised that things come only when they have to and we can’t expect them before their time? Is it because I have realised that there is no short cut to hard work and I need to work hard first and foremost before i expect any reward?

Or is it because I have truly become lazy? I think it might be a combination of the two because in all fairness it would be wrong to say I am not doing my little bit to look for a new job and get myself qualified. Maybe I need to both constantly find my inner motivation and regularly feed it and also move with the tide. And maybe beginning to feel a complacency/dependancy in love is actually comfort and security. I don’t know why that last bit is still a scary though also a very inviting prospect.

Maybe am just going to end up like any other girl. Scary. Very scary.

Guilt however small can hold you back so no amount of confidence, enthusiasm or love can overcome it unless you choose to let it go. It can engulf you and make you afraid in a way far far more horrendous than being afraid of a terrorist or a rapist or a ghost. It makes you afraid neither of the world nor of consequences of actions, but of yourself and of drowning within your low self esteem. It makes you realise your own lack of worth egging you to want to hide, disappear or simply give up and stop fighting. It makes you believe that you deserve all the bad things that happen/happened to you. It screws up your sense of justice in terms of understanding that punishment should equal the crime. It allows you to accept any kind of abuse because you think you deserve it.

This is at all levels. Superficial levels of allowing friends and family to take you for granted, people to take advantage of you to intense levels of accepting domestic abuse and other forms of punishment.

Guilt perhaps is the most powerful way to hold a human being slave to you and to your will. But that is drastic and might seem long term at the moment. Even the perception of guilt unmans you in the most shocking of ways in a small situation. I had always believed that when innocent, a man is the strongest. He knows he has done nothing wrong and he can stand up straight on that knowledge and fight the world. But supposing he has done 1/100th of what is wrong in a particular instance and has been penalised for it? What if that teeny tiny mistake holds him because he truly believes he needs to be punished because of that? Then he ceases to see justice or understand even a semblance of it. Then he allows you to take over control and lets you tell him that he is wrong and he needs to be punished for it. He bends over backwards to make right that teeny tiny wrong he thinks he has committed. There are so many people in jails today for crimes that are very pardonable. People who think they deserve to be punished because their teeny tiny mistake contributed to 1/100th of the crime. And the system punishes them because they didn’t have enough faith in themselves to fight.

The character of Sirius Black in Harry Potter was perhaps the most brilliant examples of a man who fought himself. It wasn’t easy being kept in prison in isolation for 13 years with the guilty knowledge that somewhere because of him his best friends died. His connection with their death was remote and very coincidental yet he blamed himself. It is very difficult to convince oneself that one’s guilt is only so much and to restrict it. He had to fight himself and continuously remind himself day in and day out that he was indeed innocent, that he did not deserve to be in prison. It is so easy under abuse and isolation to believe that one might have truly done something wrong to be in there. Even through his struggle against allowing his own morale to disintegrate, what kept him alive and pushed him out was the urge of revenge. The guilt remained.

There could be various arguments against my understanding stating that I am exaggerating the effects of guilt and its permeation in our psyches. But I haven’t met one human being free from its grip whether minor or major. I still don’t know how we fight it because that could be another long debate between rationale and feelings. But it is a rare person who accepts only as much as was meted out by him.