I would like to say this story began when I first saw you, busy as you were talking to your friends. For a moment I noticed your shine, but that too quickly passed as friends jostled me and I lost sight of you. It would not matter anyway. We were in the same class and I soon found out your name. The day ended and weeks passed. I would like to say that was when it started. But it did not. This story started years before when I a was child barely capable of retaining lasting memories.
I was always a loner in my preschool days. It was just the nerd in me preferring to be left alone. I always liked silence – and the vast emptiness of space it produced which I enjoyed filling with my imagination. That’s why an outstretched hand and an offer of friendship seemed out of place for me. She was that girl that stood beside me while we were scolded by the teacher and asked to stand on our chairs for something I cannot remember now.
I think it started that day. Yet I cannot be sure. Early childhood memories are always suspect. You cannot trust which are real, and which are just figments of an overactive imagination. A problem which was certainly exacerbated in my case.
You told me before how crazy and vastly different life would have been, if things did not happen as they did. Youth stole away everything from us. Yet it gave us that fleeting time, that one moment nobody can ever take away from us.
We were never friends even when it started. Always we started with the premise of love before friendship. I think it was the wrong way to cultivate everything from the beginning. I thought it was something we could fight through.
I was always unforgiving of myself, and you were always intimidated by me. Those things doomed us from the start.
We were polar opposites, and opposites attract. We could never bridge that gap, to complement each other instead of destroying each other.
I was one day late with my call, and you were one day too early leaving.
I can’t delay the inevitable, and I must keep pace with my destiny. The years I’ve been spending idling is over. I’ve forestalled as long as I have in the hope of making something out of nothing.
I’d like to say this story began with you. But I’d like to believe this story began before time even ran. And I’m picking up where I’ve left off. Right in the beginning, filling silence with imagination.
Potpourri 