I am not 'that'

Every morning when I use to walk to school, see you with your friends pass by in a car, I only dreamed of having, always gave a picture that how sorted and happy your life is. While in school you were so carefree, to my so-called taught manners smoking, drinking and stuffs were bad, but watching you do that, didn’t feel so wrong. With passing time, I found myself falling for a person who was bad and manner less according to my ‘so-called’ manners. I guess it was so because, I was watching you enjoying life. While here with those manners I’ve been taught to follow, my life was a misery, a kind of burden. I wished to live the way you do, but I was so scared to step out of my manner-boundaries. So, eventually, I fell for a person ‘they’ won’t accept. The wrong felt so right. You were good looking, and for sure I did know, you had lot of guys hooking on to you just for that ‘lust-thing’. I bet nobody had a genuine feeling, it was just your body to them. And words spread so fast, faster when you yourself brag about it. You having ‘things’ with guys and all, it use to freak me out, but then, a flash of thought ‘just how carefree you are’. I wish, I never should have heard your voice that day, when you and your friend were arguing about how average she is and how good looking you are, she said “It’s creepy how those guys look at you, I mean how gross. Why everybody has to look out just for bodies”, “Hmm I get that a lot”, “It’s disgusting”, “No, I kind of like it, being the ‘Miss Popular’, I don’t care for what”, “but you realize that they all are just filthy perverts”, “So what, that makes me more confident about my body, I am sexy, haha”, “Oh, whatever, lol”, “I’ve been getting this for a long time now. I was 11, my uncle and aunt took me to a restaurant, I remember how guys were looking at me, they were all suit-tie people. I mean when I look back to that day, I simply realize no matter how so-called ‘mannered’ you are, you still can be piece of shit”, “Ya, that is why you have so many ex-boyfriends”, “haha…my car is here, I should go now, and bad or whatever still I won’t stop being ‘me’, haha(evil laugh)”, “you really need to see a doctor”, “Nah, he’s the one who need to see me, bye catch you later”, “God! Haha, bye see you”. That little conversation I heard, was eating my head up. And that oldie flash of thought ‘just how carefree you are’, was irritating. You sure was ‘the girl’ of the school everybody wanted to have ‘lust-thing’ with, and you made yourself look so ‘you’. Now the wrong started sounding so. But don’t know why I still had this feeling of affection for you. I just wanted to rip my heart out and pin out that emotion and throw it into the trash.

I gave up coming to school, just in hope that these feelings will fade if I stop seeing you. It was a good plan, good but if it work. That conversation, and you never left my mind, it was just worse not knowing whom you are around with now. Few weeks passed somehow, being one of the geeks with those ‘manners’ I had no trouble for attendance. It was a month and half, and one day, the doorbell rang. I kept the book on the couch with the last sentence still on my mouth I walked toward the door, I opened it and to my surprise, the last person I thought it could be, it was you standing in front of my eyes. With my eyes wide open and that millions of seconds of pause I took (I think it was that long), barely finding a word to start with, you said “Hi, so this is the right house after all, sorry to bother you, and not to mention bothering myself too, unfortunately we are project partners”, I didn’t know what kind of feeling I had that time, it was jumping with excitement and with fear of falling deeper for you at the same time. Within that fraction of second, my thoughts had a argument among themselves, it was like ‘For the notion and against the notion kind of thing’, the ‘against-one’ said “You were trying all these days to just forget her, so just pass this project thing”, ‘for-one’ replied “True, but look you didn’t”, “You have heard her conversation earlier, don’t you get how she is”, “Maybe be, but she’s just ruler of her own choices”, “The choices which are not even options for you”, “Whatever, but look how happy she’s with her life, which you ain’t”, “So for happiness you have to let her rule your choices”, “She hadn’t”, “Yeah, well it isn’t like she won’t”, “You don’t even know her yet”, “So do you”. And my mind quickly sent a chemical-hormone to my heart and as the final expression on my face, with a broad smile, I replied “Holy shit……….Oh I’m sorry, I mean it’s great, so when do we start”, “You know what, its fine, I’ll tell teacher you aren’t feeling well yet and won’t recover soon, she surely will pass”, “wait, no, I mean, I want to do this”, “No, we are cool”, “I’ll do 70% of it”, “90%”, “75%, and we’ll start tomorrow morning”, (A pause, then you said)“huh! Ok whatever, my place, morning”, “Cool, morning it is, don’t want to come in?”, “No, I am totally fine, see you tomorrow, Bye”, “Ok speedy, tomorrow, bye”. I closed the door at your back, and I was still trying to figure out if it was real, was I the lucky one, when suddenly my mom called out my name, “Who was it on the door”, yeah it was real.

With my head filled with all kinds of thoughts, I left for your place, “will I have a good impression of her” and blah-blah-blah. Now in front of your house, it was so huge and all white. You welcomed me in, “It’s a huge house”, “You were telling me or asking me”, “Oh, no, I was just wondering myself”, “Come down boy, don’t get yourself lost”, “Your father must be working so hard”, “Yeah he did, so hard that he passed away when I was 4, though my mother is a CEO, now she’s working hard”, “Oh, I am sorry”, “It’s alright, this is my room, lets first print some information”, “Sure”. Being around you for all day, for days, was the most I could have asked for. But yeah, human is a greedy creature, now I have it, I want more, I wanted you to be my partner. It was good carving my feeling while being around you, I had a feeling that I am into you, for real. As that one day, that random conversation headed somewhere deep, “…….sure you have a good taste for restaurants”, “Well, sort of, yours is admirable too”, “Oh, that’s rare to hear. So you’ve been to these restaurants with your mom”, “Oh no, she barely has time, I’ve been there with my ex”, “exes I would say, haha”, “haha, yeah you can say that”, “Such an experienced young lady”, “Oh it comes with a price”, “You are rich”, “HA-HA-HA”, “lol, price like?”, “Shattered pieces, of emotions, trust, feelings….and heart”, “One can barely believe that you cared this much about feelings all”, “What, am I not a human”, “Oh, I didn’t mean that, but that careless ‘you’ you always show up front, it barely would say a kind word like emotion or feelings”, “huh, one of my exes once said just before a breakup, ‘you are not that crazy lady anymore, what a fake bitch you are’, to hear something what you have stopped being, it hurts. I turned my back and walked straight home, and never looked his face again”, “Oh, that must me terrible”, “Ya, I think that’s what all of my exes thought of, they thought I am just body, with no soul, just a body with no role”, “Sorry, but this is all people do say about you, and once I heard your conversation too, by mistake”, “So you think the same of me”, “No, not at all, I am neutral about you, it’s wrong to have made-up opinions or say thoughts about somebody you barely know as a person”, “Oh, I am not the only one with deep words here I guess”, “But all this smoking and drinks you do, I hardly can believe this generous person sitting next to me is the same”, “I was 12, when I realized how lonely it is to not to have my father around, mom use to keep herself busy to get over her loneliness and she works hard to get me every comfort I want, but it was nothing when she or no one else was there to share with. I was 12 and half, a guy approached me, said he finds me interesting. I swept him off, I found it awkward. Then that night at home, I had a thought, how good it’ll be to have somebody to share my sour as well as happiness with, to share all my nightmares and to share my lunch box with. After few day, he came and talked to for an hour or so, and said he likes me and he wanted to be my partner, I felt so happy about it. He use to bring chocolate to me, and I use to help him with his homework. Few days passed, it was fine, I use to tell him my little childish secrets, and about my little treasure. One day, I was approaching to him, and I heard his voice saying, ‘just once I touch those lips of hers, you guys will see how bold I am’, I went in, slapped him, ran back home, cried for hours and hours and hours, until my mom called, “Hello champ, I have some urgent work to do, I will have to leave straight from office to another state, so I won’t be seeing you for a week, so be good and eat on time, take care OK, will you?”, “Yes momma, talk to you later bye” and I hung up the phone and cried for that whole night. In the morning, I was looking terrible, I was feeling that pain, it wasn’t the kind of pain that ache, it was different, I wasn’t OK, so I went to kitchen, looking that chef was not there, I reached the champion somehow, and had a glass full of it. I went to my room and didn’t wake up for whole day. I woke up at night, butler was knocking on my door, “I’ll have food later” I said, he left. I realized how that non-aching pain faded with alcohol, and I made up to everything elders do, alcohol and smoking, it feels so relieved after so many shattered pieces of your own self hurting your feet when you walk by your path”, “It sounds bad, I feel sorry for you, now I say you are strong, holding so much into you”, “till that day, I’ve tried to let other comfort me, and I failed, every time, I rather shattered the pieces into more pieces, now when they sink into my feet they are even hard to remove”, “Please don’t cry, I can’t believe how stronger you could be”, “It’s still easy to show other that I am tough, but it’s terribly hard to convince myself that I could make it to one more day”, “now I understand, it’s fine for one to find comfort in ‘lusty-things’ after all they’ve been through”, “What!? I keep bragging about those bad stuffs, ‘coz I feel such a pity of myself, I don’t want to hit into that old me I was, who’ll be ashamed, to see what I’ve became into, I’ve never let a boy touch my body, ever. Never until I felt somebody is genuine about his feelings, which never was the case”, “You can’t believe how amazing I am feeling right now, to finally know the real ‘you’ which is just pure sanity. In such a small span a pure art you’ve lived, I loved you, I guess, I still do. I’ve always wondered why I do, it was clueless. I never thought I could ever tell you this, but the person you really are, is stone which has fined her beauty with those strokes of hammer, and ended up being so gorgeous that my eyes are just twitching with the fineness of your soul”, to which you replied “I’ve been noticing you a long time back, the way you look at me is far different and comforting than ‘theirs’, I, being such a mess, didn’t want to ruin you, cause with just that gaze I could say how real you are. When you stopped coming to school since months, I made my mind to check on you, and came up with this plan, to make up a project thing, which I thought you definitely would refuse to do. But crap, you jumped in, so I thought to spend some time with you using this plan I build up. I hope you are not mad at me”, “Tell me this is not a dream, I thought we just became friends few minutes back, when you shared your heart out, and let me step in your shoe, and now here we are, you like me too”, “Yeah, I don’t know why you fell so connected and so right, I never figured that out until today, you are the only one in this whole world, with whom I could talk to about me, and I can let walk in my shoe, you are the one who don’t see my body but my soul deep somewhere. And all these days we’ve spent on this ‘non-existing project’, I’ve found how genuine you are”. To break your words, I kissed your lips, and stopped another word coming out. Without wasting a moment, I said those three words I was dying to utter “I love you”, “I love you too Mr. Right”. And from that day we’ve never looked back, I can barely explain in words how amazing partner you are, and an amazing mother. God, if you exist, I have only two wishes to ask, keep that smile on her face like that sun when its dawn, gorgeous and relaxing, and I want to live my every breath by her side, even the last one.

-Sakib Tamboli

A Story Teller

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