He came and then he left. She found a way to live without him, to smile without him, to move forward without him - she had to and she did. She didn't resent it. She didn't resent him. She didn't resent life. She never resented love. Yet, she thought of him every single day. Not in an incessant, saddening way; but like when you're so engrossed in something that you don't blink, but then you do. Simply because it is intrinsic. Natural.
She smiled to herself when she saw parts of him in others. It became a part of her which she had initially fought, wrestled, tried to uproot from within herself and then when it always came back to her, she made her peace with it. Sometimes, when the longing she kept so strictly leashed crept on her heart, her let her pillow absorb her tears. And then, she went on with her life.
She kept him close, but stayed afar from him. She missed their conversations - honest, silly and beautiful - but she never really talked to him the few times they actually made contact. They remained distant friends so to say, knowing somewhere that they each held a special place in the other's life. She knew that he was much more dear to her even in his absence than she was to him. She never spoke of it and time passed. Life wasn't bad.
Yet, she always thought of her life in two parts - Before Him and After Him. The time In Between was now a montage she had framed in her mind and preserved in her heart - a lifetime in itself. She would look through these frames, hands pressed against the glass, wanting to touch those memories, wondering what could have been; yet scared of disturbing them, lest she forget one tiny detail. Years past, her mind let not a speck of dust settle on them, their beauty intact.
It wasn't like she stayed lonesome or melancholy; she even loved again. But not the same way, never the same way. Her eyes grew blurry but her vision would always revisit those places. She spoke of him and to him, now and then. Conversations that were sometimes frustratingly empty, but she wanted to keep them going while they lasted. She wasn't unfaithful, no. She was just wanted to know anything she could about him.
You see, she had realized that what she kept so pristine in her heart was a mere memory. She loved, even worshiped that memory, but she realized he wasn't real in them anymore. Endlessly she would try to bridge the gap, seeking any tiny part of him that he or someone who knew him would give away in a careless sentence. She would grasp at every word, to discover some part of him that was real and new, and treasure it. She would try to balance it on her recollections of him to make the person in them seem closer to the one in reality, despite knowing he wasn't even close to their memories.
Until one day.
She dreamed of him, just like so many other times. But this time, a tiny little nudge came from within one of those dark recesses of her heart and she told him about her dream. It was nothing special, really. He was just there in it. Looking up his number, she was strangely calm as she typed out the message.
When he responded, they had their first real conversation in years. Maybe it was because he was at vulnerable place in his life, or because she realized at that moment, on that day, that her love for him was unconditional. She did not need to be with him, to kiss him, to touch him. She did not need for him to be in love with her. She realized that the time 'In Between' and even after it - time she had spend needing and wanting him - she was not chained to feeling that way. Her love for him now grew from her flesh and blood self to something unbound by time and spaces, weightless and free of expectation.
In that realization, she wrote, "I missed you." It was not an act of need this time. It was not even a sentence that could encompass everything she had felt for him, all these years she had spent wishing, hoping wondering, nor her parching thirst to hear his name, seeking any quirks of his that would make her thoughts of him closer to his physical, living, breathing, beautiful self. Yet, it was all she felt. After a long time, she acknowledged tides of familiar emotion break against her rapidly beating heart. The pillow lay there barren while her tears found their way to the dainty curve of her smile.
She was unafraid of losing what little she had grasped of him for the first time, maybe because she realized she did not need to want him. What she felt for him was not bound by anything anymore. It was powerful, free and endless.
She put aside her phone. Taking off her glasses, she sighed. As that gush of breath escaped her mouth, she felt herself getting light headed. Giving in, she fell back and her head hit the pillow. As her eyes closed, her smile was slight and serene. The waves of emotion were still crashing against her heart, and she felt the welcome pain in her chest. She had let go and it consumed her. Slowly, like vines around a tree, it closed around her like a beautiful coffin.
As she lay there with a smile on her face and her love set far and free, she was at peace. Unconditionally.
