A Woman In Love...

This article is about a real living person, lets call her Alisha. I am aware that a single article can never do justice to a person’s story, so I am going to try to cover only certain aspects of the story.

What is Love? When people claim that they have fallen in love, what exactly do they love in the person? And I am specifically wondering about people who say they have fallen for someone who doesn’t feel for them. I mean, are they in awe with how that person looks, speaks or carries themselves? Is that what love means to them?

See, I am not trying to make a point by asking these seemingly existential questions. I am genuinely perplexed by these thoughts, have always been. You see, love, for me, has always been a reaction. A reaction to someone’s affection for me. The only reason I ever needed to love a person was for them to love me first.

And that’s why I could never understand Alisha.

We had first met under the worst possible circumstances. I was in the last stages of a messy relationship, which wasn't quite over. And she was just a girl I happened to talk to. She spoke honestly & had an effortless grace in the way she carried herself that impressed me. And we clicked.

When I told her about my attraction, it turned out that she was interested as well. But the whole thing was ill-timed. The other girl, the one from the messy relationship, intervened. I didn't handle it well. And it soon ended, with Alisha getting severely hurt. We moved apart and frankly, I did not expect to hear from her ever again.

But I did!!!

A few years had passed & the messy relationship from earlier, had ended with the girl cheating on me. It had left me with a strong distrust of women. And to top all that, I was in a rebound relationship with a girl I didn't really care for.

When you don’t trust women, you don't really make an effort to be trustworthy yourself. So, when I heard from Alisha at this point, I didn't tell her about the rebound girlfriend. And we started reconnecting. Thats when I realised that she had been in love with me all these years, even when we were not in contact. I found out that she had turned down a couple of guys in the past few years.

It was flattering and as I had mentioned earlier, was enough for me to “love” her. But deep inside, I couldn't really trust her completely. So, I ended up seeing her while I still was with the rebound girl. Mea culpa.

Over the next few years, I kept on with my indiscretions, due to my lack of trust, while I kept her on the hook. I think, deep inside, I expected her to get fed up & leave, thus confirming my view about women being unreliable, in general. But she stuck around.

I’d never seen unconditional love before. By the time, I realised THIS WAS IT, Alisha had found out about everything I’d done. And she still stayed. She didn't

trust me anymore, but she stayed. Now this was a true example of a woman in love. An example, I wish someone had set earlier, so that I could have appreciated what I had and kept her trust.

Alas! Trust, as they say, is like virginity. But such is the perseverance of a woman’s love that she never left me. The burden of my guilt kept weighing heavier on my shoulders with each passing day where I still had Alisha’s love. Until I broke down.

Our trust issues were beyond redemption. She wanted to stay with me in spite of all the wrongs, but I knew that I’d have to let her go, if I wanted her to ever have a shot at real happiness. So I did, it was gruesome and cruel, but there was no easier way to do it. She was too much in love with me to leave on her own.

I sleep easier these days, knowing that I set her free, to find someone who’s deserving of her affection. This might very well be the only act of true love that I ever made.