Listen to: The Winter by Balmorhea

I fell in love with a stranger I never met. We were perfect; I knew he was my soulmate whose rib cage I was created from. He was also the soulmate who broke my heart and rendered me into the mass of sadness I am today. 

I used to write him letters everyday while he was at work. He would come back all tired, loosen his tie and send me a kiss made of virtual pixels. Then, he would read them out loud to me. It was our thing. We fell in love oh so suddenly, like it was meant to happen so much so that even the miles separating us could not stop us. I wish they did, though.

In fact, the reason he fell in love with me, he would often remind me, was my words. The naive 16 year old in me thought it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever told me. It is ironic how there are two sides to every phrase said to us. Now, I think it was the saddest lie I lived in for nine long months. 

We were crazy about numbers. It was one more thing added to our “list.” Yes, we had a list, a metaphorical one, to add all that is in common between us. Our birthdates, habits, likes, dislikes, music taste, and even order among siblings were alike. They seem rather normal to me, now that I reminisce. Back then, though, he was my one in a billion. 

It has been years since the ink of my words had dried, why do I write of him again I do not know. He is my harbor, in a very sad kind of way; the harbor that failed to rest my ship in its safety. He was the reassuring guy, the one who had his life planned until the grave. Or maybe that is how I remember him to be. I, on the other hand, was a lost little lamb – his little lamb – till he decided I was one lamb too lost to handle.

He eventually married a red hair; he had a thing for red haired beauty because he was raised with one particularly beautiful one. I know this because he told me when I had called after he left, desperate and in tears, for a stranger’s voice that once warmed my heart with sweet words of forever after, and I believed every single one of them.

I always thought that no matter how it went, we would end up together. Not because we were in love, only few love stories make great relationship stories. Not because we had so much in common, either. Not because our birthdays had the same pattern or because if we flipped their digits into letters, we would get love spelled out. Of course, he played around with the letters and I let him. We were both desperate to believe our story was different, that cupid handstitched our love arrows above all others. We were both naive, then again, love does that to people.

I never wanted us to end. He was the first and only piece in the puzzle that perfectly fit. I hid away my scissors and stopped searching for answers, because for once, it made sense. He made sense. We made sense. Cosmic fate had a funny way of working – the kind of funny that makes you cry.

He used to love my eyes. He had a thing for Armenians and their big eyes, like mine. In fact, he had a thing for anything that walked with bouncing curves. I was not the jealous type, but with him, I was the insecure child type. I did not know half the things he wanted me to know, but I knew I loved him and for him it was enough, temporarily.

Now, I do not know if I ever knew what love is or even had gotten as close as arms length from it. I know it exists, though. I am a recovered denial stage occupant. I thought love was only a key he carried in his heart. When it was all said and done, I could not believe love can ever occupy a man with his black heart, unless it was a lie. For a while, I believed in no love, no soulmates, no luck, and no happy endings. It was all a big lie and I fell for it. Eventually, I grew up like he never would and owned up to a closure he failed to provide. I let myself believe in love and its aura again, because I am a girl who cannot leave her house without knowing that hope is lurking around the corner, just waiting to bump into me. My belief in luck, however, was never resuscitated.

This is our story. Well, for the most part.

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Modern Romance will be an attempt for me to start a strain of thought long enough to contain all parts of a novel. It is not a novel, but an attempt at writing long short stories cut into different posts. This is part 1; the introduction.